Timecode Cowboys | Season Two | Ep. 1 | The Universal Backlot: Hollywood’s Factory Floor

In this S2 premiere episode, we explore the history, mythology, and everyday reality of Universal Studios Hollywood — not as a theme park, but as a working studio that’s been shaping Hollywood for more than a century.

We’re joined on a backlot field trip by special guests Ben Sommer (@ben.gordo), Director of Programmatic Partnerships at NBCUniversal, and Andrew Paz (@andybrand), co-founder of Big Time (@bigtimebigtimebigtimebigtime), bringing insider access and fresh perspective along for the ride.

In this episode, we cover:

• 🎞️ The birth of the studio tour and the chaos of silent-era filmmaking
• 🧠 Life inside the machine: soundstages, commissaries, parking politics, and daily studio rhythms
• 🦈 How Spielberg and Verna Fields saved Jaws when the shark wouldn’t work
• 🌍 Universal logo history, late-’90s DVD bumpers, and studio branding obsessions
• 🔥 Studio fires, lost archives, and preservation vs. reinvention

It’s a reset. A road trip. And a statement of intent for Season Two: fewer walls, more field trips, and a deeper connection to the places where film history is still being made.

🎬 Films & TV Shows Discussed:

• The Time Tunnel (1966)
• Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964)
• How the West Was Won (1962)
• The Battle of the Bulge (1965)
• Grand Prix (1966)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Airport (1970)
• Columbo (1971)
• The Towering Inferno (1974)
• Earthquake (1974)
• Airport 1975 (1974)
• Jaws (1975)
• Midway (1976)
• Alien (1979)
• Apocalypse Now (1979)
• The Rockford Files (1974)
• Hart to Hart (1979)
• Jurassic Park (1993)
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
• The Mummy (1999)
• The Mummy Returns (2001)
• CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000)
• Desperate Housewives (2004)
• The Artist (2011)
• Stranger Things (2016)

••Babylon (2022)

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Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 15 | TV PILOTS! (Season One Finale)

We’re closing the book on Season One — and doing it the only way we know how: by talking about the strange, high-stakes, half-forgotten corner of Hollywood history known as the TV pilot.

In this finale episode, Danny and his dad dig into the lost art of pilot season: rushed schedules, wild concepts, focus-group madness, and shows that almost were.

Drawing on decades of firsthand experience cutting pilots — some brilliant, some doomed — we trace how the system worked, why it collapsed, and what it says about how Hollywood used to gamble on ideas instead of algorithms.

Along the way, we veer into market testing, Nielsen ratings, backdoor pilots, pilot killers, soundtrack needle drops, and the eerie feeling of standing outside buildings where entire TV futures were once decided.

In this episode, we cover:

• 🎬 What a TV pilot actually is — and why most never made it to air
• 🧪 Focus groups, Nielsen diaries & the Preview House on Sunset Blvd
• ✂️ Inside the cutting room — brutal deadlines, unfinished episodes & sudden cancellations
• 📺 Standalone TV vs. serialized prestige — what we lost, what we gained
• 🤠 Personal war stories — the pilots that almost changed everything

More importantly, this episode also marks the end of Timecode Cowboys: Season One — and the beginning of a new era. New seasons, new collaborators, new music, and field-trip episodes exploring Hollywood’s past, present, and future are just over the horizon.

Cowboys out (for now).

🎬 Films and TV Shows discussed:

My Mother the Car (1965, TV)

Mister Ed (1961–1966, TV)

Star Trek (1966–1969, TV)

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

The Last Run (1971)

Columbo (1971–2003, TV)

McCloud (1970–1977, TV)

The Name of the Game (1968–1971, TV)

The Rockford Files (1974–1980, TV)

Little House on the Prairie (1974–1983, TV)

The Twilight Zone (1959–1964, TV)

Hill Street Blues (1981–1987, TV)

St. Elsewhere (1982–1988, TV)

Star Wars (1977)

Doctor Who (1963–present, TV)

ER (1994–2009, TV)

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–2015, TV)

CSI: Miami (2002–2012, TV)

Century City (2004, TV)

Breaking Bad (2008–2013, TV)

The Dark Knight (2008)

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Timecode Cowboys | Ep. 14 | David P. Loughery: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

We’re back — and this week we literally walked off the 18th green, dropped our clubs, and hit record. Why?
Because David P. Loughery — screenwriter, mentor, raconteur, and honorary cowboy — loved two things with unadulterated devotion: classic movies … and golf!

From Dreamscape to Passenger 57, Money Train, The Three Musketeers, Lakeview Terrace, and The Intruder, David built the kind of career Hollywood rarely celebrates: steady, surprising, generous, and full of personality. A real craftsman. A real wit. A real one-of-one.

In this episode, we cover:

• 📝 Script stories from the trenches — Snipes, Quaid, Shatner & beyond
• 🎬 Notes swaps & mentorship — how David shaped Danny’s writing
• 🍸 Martinis, mini-malls & midnight noirs — David’s secret map of Los Angeles
• 😂 The quirks — the early arrivals, the BMW he wouldn’t drive on freeways, the Word docs saved “somewhere”
• 🧠 A master of genre — thrillers, western riffs, studio rewrites, and pure storytelling
• 💙 A friend who became family — and the voice still echoing in our writing

Here’s to David and the movies, the memories, and the punchlines he gifted us.

🎬 Films discussed:

Dreamscape (1984)
Heart to Hart (TV)
The Stepfather (1987)
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Flashback (1990)
Passenger 57 (1992)
Money Train (1995)
Tom and Huck (1995)
Lakeview Terrace (2008)
Obsessed (2009)
Penthouse North (2013)
Nurse 3D (2013)
The Intruder (2019)

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