When I was living in LA in the mid-’80s I got to know a technical co-ordinator/assistant director named Rick Beren who worked on Cheers. Young and not above camping out on a contruction site to save a dime, he and his girlfriend lived on his boss’s very modern-looking house in the heart of Beverly Hills while it was undergoing an extensive renovation. They would roll up in their dented Karmann Ghia in front of this concrete mansion in the making, horrifying all the Bentley owners on the block. They had the run of the place for at least a year.
The house belonged to TV sitcom legend Jim Burrows. Think of that; one of TV’s top producer-directors trusted this guy with his show and his house. Gives you some idea of how generous he was, both personally and professionally.
Jim Burrows died June 19 at the age of 85. One of the three creators of Cheers (along with the Charles brothers Glen and Les), Burrows directed 236 episodes of that amazing series.
Burrows became known as the “Sitcom Yoda.” He had a gift for finding the funny on a series and was always in demand to direct a pilot episode. Nobody had a better record for helping a comedy find its feet.
Besides Cheers, Burrows directed many episodes of these other landmark sitcoms: Friends, Frasier, Will & Grace (every episode; even of the reboot), The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, 3rd Rock from the Sun, NewsRadio, Two and a Half Men, and The Big Bang Theory. His directing career spanned six decades, and he earned 11 Primetime Emmys.
Nobody’s perfect. Burrows also directed pilot episodes of the Cheers‘ spinoff The Tortelli‘s, The Fanelli Brothers, William Shatner’s S#*! My Dad Says, Ladies Man with Alfred Molina, a rare Chuck Lorre misfire B Positive and the recent Nathan Lane vehicle Mid-Century Modern.
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I spoke to him on a Hollywood set a dozen or so years ago, it might have been Mike & Molly (2010-2016). Colleagues were mainly scrumming with the stars. Burrows was standing off to one side and gave me a little one-on-one time. He was friendly and unassuming and I wish I could find that interview.
I’ve spoken with many of the people he collaborated with over the years and they all have a Jimmy Burrows story or two. Eric McCormack from Will & Grace has always said that he felt so lucky to have been directed by The Master. When I talked to him on brioux.tv: the podcast, writer-producer Ken Levine (Cheers, Frasier) agreed that Burrows made every episode better.
The son of Broadway, radio and television writer Abe Burrows, Jim was a native of Los Angeles. Television seemed to be in his blood. Matthew Perry told me that when they met to shoot the pilot of Friends, Burrows put him at ease by telling him to not sweat hitting his mark at various points on the set; he’d find him in the scene.
After the pilot wrapped and before it premiered, Burrows took Perry and his five co-stars on a trip to Vegas. None of them had ever been on a hit show before. Burrows could see that Friends would be a monster success. He told them that their lives would soon change to the degree that none of them would ever be able to wander anonymously around Las Vegas or anywhere else again.
When Kelsey Grammer revieved Frasier a few years ago at Paramount+, he insisted Burrows help with the launch. Hired to play single mom Eve on that series was Canadian actress Jess Salgueiro. On our podcast conversation, Salgueiro admitted she was nervous heading into an audition before both Grammer and Burrows.
Pressure? Yes and no says the Winnipeg native. With hundreds trying out for the part, she told herself just have fun and see if you can make them laugh. She did, and made the cut.
Salgueiro got a kick out of the short-hand Grammer and Burrows — who directed him on both Cheers and Frasier — used on the set. “They called each other Honey.”
The director wrote a biography that came out in 2022: Directed by James Burrows: Five Decades of Stories from the Legendary Director of Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Will & Grace and More (Ballantine Books). For readers who would like to hear more from Burrows himself, he took a victory lap when the book came out, appearing on several podcasts including one with his Cheers pals Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson. If you haven’t heard it, it is definitely worth a listen.
