For some reason I can’t find an embeddable version of this video where idiots in a focus group give their suggestions for how to improve “The Wizard of Oz.” But you can watch it here on Gawker. The really funny thing is that these comments aren’t so far-fetched. I spent 18 months working on a TV show in Hollywood and got comments like this all the time. Worse yet, these “notes” weren’t coming from focus group members. They were coming from network executives. We had to pretend to listen to them. Sometimes we even had to take a stab at accommodating them. I was told that this is par for the course in the TV business. Good times! I look back on the whole experience like a bad dream.


it’s cute. but it kind of felt like the aging sctv folk needed a day’s work to get their SAG health care for the year and keep their prescriptions up. oh, and bob balaban.
What happened with the TV show, did you get as far as a pilot?
If the project is dead, any chance of seeing the script? ;p
The best/most absurd thing I was ever told by a focus group participant when I was making car commercials: “you need more trucks and fewer colored folks”. I loved what the Christopher Guest group did with this absurdity.