USA TODAY International Edition
James Burrows racks up 1,000 episodes
Legendary sitcom king is still firing on ‘ all cylinders’
Name a hit TV comedy from the past four decades, and there’s a good chance director James Burrows was standing behind the camera.
Burrows, master of the multicamera sitcom taped in front of an audience, has directed a hall of fame’s worth of comedies, from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi
and Cheers to Frasier, Friends and Will & Grace. He has long been Hollywood’s go- to guy for sitcom pilots, giving initial shape to many hits, including 3rd Rock From the Sun, Dharma & Greg, Night Court, Roc, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory.
Tuesday, when Burrows di- rects NBC’s midseason comedy
Crowded, he will reach his 1,000th episode ( including a few that were never broadcast).
“It’s always the writing,” he says of how he picks assignments. “It’s not necessarily the idea.
Cheers was not a high- concept show, a bar in Boston. It was the execution.”
Executive producer Sean Hayes, a Will & Grace star, praises Burrows for having “all cylinders working in glorious unison at all times. At any given moment, he’s completely focused on the cameras, the actors, the story, the jokes, the writers, the crew and his next tee time.”
In a medium where the writer typically rules, Burrows’ clout is apparent from a contractual “fun clause” that allows him to leave a show if he’s not having any. He exercised it once, but won’t say for which show. ( He has actually been fired a couple of times, once “for not shooting a close- up of a capon” and another time “because a writer was scared of me.”)
Burrows isn’t worried about talk of the demise of the multicamera comedy. He has a smaller canvas as networks squeeze in more commercials: Cheers episodes typically ran 26 minutes; now, most sitcoms are under 21.
“It’s not as popular as it used to be, but I’ve been around for comedy being dead four or five times,” he says. “It will turn around. The networks are doing single- camera comedies, very precious shows. Still, the No. 1 comedy on the air is The Big Bang Theory. ( Producer Chuck Lorre) is keeping the form alive.”
Burrows, 74, is having fun as a director and executive producer of Crowded, which stars Stacy Keach, a Yale Drama School classmate ( Burrows’ motivation to attend: “It was the Vietnam War and I didn’t want to go to Vietnam”) and is written by Fra
sier alum Suzanne Martin. “I did nine out of 13 episodes,” he says. “I’m trying to cut back.”