TVSquad

Give Justine Bateman credit: She could have been typecast after playing the dippy, fashion-obsessed Mallory Keaton on Family Ties, but she's been able to build a nice career for herself over the last twenty years by playing interesting supporting roles in movies like The TV Set and series like Desperate Housewives. But she's also been -- just like 75% of the people in Hollywood -- an aspiring writer, struggling to get her scripts produced (and you think having connections helps ... she knows Michael J. Fox and her brother is Jason Bateman, and she still couldn't get her scripts produced).

But now she can add "sitcom writer" to her credits; she just wrote an episode of The Disney Channel's hit Wizards of Waverly Place, according to the New York Daily News. Apparently, she's a friend of executive producer Peter Murrieta, and she got to know some of the show's writers during the writers' strike. So, when the strike ended, she was invited to write an episode for the show.

When you hear the name "Shonda Rhimes" what words come to mind? I'm pretty sure those words are "Grey's" and "Anatomy." But what you may not know is that before writing gripping TV series such as Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, Rhimes also put pen to paper for The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and -- you'd better be sitting properly on your chair before reading this -- Britney Spears's Crossroads! Can you believe that the Emmy award winner wrote that terrible and rightfully Razzie-nominated Crossroads?!?

There's hope after all for an American television landscape with more than reruns and reality shows in 2008. As reported here on TV Squad earlier, while the strike continues, the Writer's Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have agreed to return to the negotiating table come November 26, after the Thanksgiving holiday. We at TV Squad, who let's face it make our livings off the written word, decided that the main focus of this whole strike has been lost in all the hype over picketing celebrities, reruns and layoffs. So we gathered half a dozen of the top television writers and offered them the chance to speak anonymously, openly and honestly about how this experience has impacted them and their families.

A few TV Squad readers contacted me to know how the strike will affect TV show spoilers and if columns like Spoilers Anonymous would vanish at some point this winter.

The short answer is that spoilers will be quite rare this winter if the strike last beyond the Holidays but not gone since a few series that already shot all or part of their upcoming seasons (e.g., The Shield, Greek, Monk, etc.) will start airing new episodes in spring time. As for the long answer...

Being the huge TV fan that I am, when I first heard about the possible writers' strike, I must admit that I was a little bit worried. I remember they went on strike before, but the 1988 strike sounds like nothing compared to the impending one because more is at stake right now.

My main concern was this: Would we be able to watch full seasons of our shows or would we be stuck with a huge break at the most inopportune moment?

Actors Donal Logue and Eliza Dushku, along with writer/producer David Hemingson, recently signed on for new network projects.

Logue stars in FOX's Barry Sonnefeld-directed comedy pilot, Hackett, as a "bad-boy literary luminary" who goes from teaching at Yale to teaching at a public school in Ohio. The pilot also stars Rachel Boston (American Dreams) and Morgan Murphy. Logue was last seen on ABC's short-lived The Knights of Prosperity. Sonnefeld will work on Hackett, as well as direct episodes of Pushing Daisies, a new series for ABC premiering Wednesdays this fall.

I think the phrase "hit or miss" is appropriate when it comes to television and Jeffrey Tambor. He's been involved with some truly great series (The Larry Sanders Show, Arrested Development), and some not-so-great series (Twenty Good Years).

Now, Tambor is heading back to the small screen to star in The Captain, which was recently approved for a six-episode, midseason run on CBS. Tambor stars as a retired writer whose apartment building is soon occupied by a younger writer, played by Fran Kranz. The series also stars Raquel Welch, Al Madrigal, Valerie Azlynn and Joanna Garcia.

Last month, I mentioned that some rumors were floating around about a possible Simpsons movie ride at Universal Studios. According to a recent interview with Simpsons writer Matt Warburton over at TV.com, it's true. Warburton was rather coy about what the ride would consist of, but he says he is writing for it and that it will be "cool."

Earlier rumors claimed the new ride, allegedly titled "Travel with Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie" would be a motion-simulation ride in which a "car" twists and moves along with an animated film to give the feeling of actual movement. One assumes that's probably going to be the case since I can't imagine how someone would "write" for any other kind of ride.

Conan O'Brien, host of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and Adam McKay, co-writer and director of Talladega Nights and Anchorman and father of the infamous Pearl, have at least one thing in common: they both worked on Saturday Night Live. The other thing they have in common is that they were each interviewed recently by two different publications.

O'Brien was interviewed by StarWars.com to coincide with the recent taping of his show in San Francisco (George Lucas was a guest on the program). This was my favorite exchange:

What was your favorite part of visiting Lucasfilm/ILM when you were here in San Francisco?

The part when Lucas took me into a glass elevator. It smashed through the roof and he told me the entire chocolate factory was mine. That poor man has lost his mind.

An acquaintance of mine used to ask me if I ever listened to The Sound of Young America, and I told her I didn't like it. As it turns out, I had it confused with some low-rent internet podcast with a similar name I cannot recall at the moment.

Anyway, Jesse, the fellow who helms Sound of Young America, recently had a couple great interviews with some very funny women. First, he interviewed Anne Beatts, who was the first female editor of National Lampoon, wrote for Saturday Night Live when that show first started, and created Square Pegs. Major TV nerd points to those of you who remember Square Pegs.

If you've been paying attention to the credits during the last few years of South Park, you'll notice that Trey Parker has directed and written every episode. I've noticed this, too, but in my reviews I've always mentioned the two men together because the show still feels very much like a joint venture to me.

The question remains, though: what is Stone's role if he's not writing the episodes? This article helps explain. It seems that Stone, in addition to serving as an executive producer, doing voices and contributing ideas, also serves as the mouthpiece for the show while Parker works on the creative side of things. Parker would rather create than have to deal with censors and network executives, so Stone steps in to fight those battles.

If you don't know who H. Jon Benjamin is, let me inform you: he's a writer and comedian most of us probably first saw when he played "Ben" on Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist. He was also a writer on that show and would later show up on Home Movies (one of my top five favorite series of all time), and the recent short-lived animated series Freak Show for Comedy Central.

In an interview with Gothamist, Benjamin revealed he was working on a new Web series for Super Deluxe called "Thunderpoint." What the series is exactly remains to be seen, but if Benjamin is behind it, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it'll be damn funny.

Eric Drysdale is a writer and comedian most will recognize as the stage manager "Bobby" on The Colbert Report (see Bobby as a leprechaun in the clip at the end of this post). Drysdale is also a writer on the show and previously wrote for The Daily Show. In addition, he's performed several times at the UCB Theater and also played with Tammy Faye Starlite, a satirical country band.

However, none of those credits could answer a question that's been nagging at me ever since I first saw Eric/Bobby appear on The Colbert Report: where had I seen this person before? After a bit of Web searching, I finally solved the mystery: in 2000, he appeared on an episode of Premium Blend singing "This Rubik's Cube is Driving Me Crazy," a song he performed under the stage name "Crazy Davis" according to this thread.

If you've been having trouble sleeping at night because you're concerned about what might become of Notes from the Underbelly creator Stacy Traub if her show doesn't make it, you can stop worrying. Traub has signed a two-year deal with Warner Bros. Television that will allow her to develop new series should Notes from the Underbelly not get picked up for another season. Otherwise, Traub will remain with the show as a show runner and executive producer. As far as what new shows she would develop, Traub says she likes shows with "flawed characters." She's also written for Kitchen Confidential and Spin City.

Notes from the Underbelly is about a young couple who become pregnant and must settle into a more mature lifestyle while simultaneously hearing advice from meddlesome family and friends. It will air on ABC.

If anyone missed it over the weekend, the more notorious half of the Olsen Twins was given the opportunity to write about her favorite handbag. But this little ditty wasn't for a woman's magazine, or for a gossip rag like InTouch. Nope, Mary-Kate Olsen wrote 185 words on her favorite Chanel bag for T:Style, a quarterly magazine insert in the Sunday New York Times (Bob mentioned this in his "Out of the Blogosphere" report earlier in the week).

Wow. I know the Times has gone after celebrities to provide bylines in the past, but the names you see are along the lines of Steve Martin, Woody Allen, and Larry David. You know, people who know how to write. I don't think any had the rudimentary ninth-grade writing skills that Mary-Kate demonstrated in her little blurb. More after the jump.