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Luella Bartley
Hui-Hui
Peter Jensen
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Entertainment
Alan Ball
Summer Bishil
Dr. Dog
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Anthology Recodrings
Marina Zenovich
Zimmerman/Berg

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Desireé Holman
Corndawg
Matt Furie
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Fiction
24 Hours on L16
Nobody Eats Oranges...
Some Mornings

The dream of creating a sitcom from the ground up has always been the drive behind Stan Zimmerman and Jim Berg’s life-long writing partnership. Between classes and college jobs, they’d spend all their time together, writing scripts and thinking up far-fetched schemes for Hollywood success. It didn’t take long for the inseparable duo to fall into the enviable position of writing sassy quips for everyone’s favorite diva retirees on The Golden Girls. After garnering a Writer’s Guild nomination for the groundbreaking lesbian kiss episode of Roseanne, writing for Gilmore Girls, and working on film projects including the upcoming Sarah Jessica Parker-attached The Ivy Chronicles, Zimmerman and Berg are finally living their dream. Their original comedy series, Rita Rocks, which they describe as Roseanne meets Welcome to the Dollhouse, premiered on Lifetime this month, starring Nicole Sullivan of Mad TV as a frustrated working mom who gets in touch with her creative side when she starts a rock band in her garage.

Bolstered by All Over The Guy’s Richard Ruccolo as Rita’s devoted husband and Tisha Campbell-Martin as their meddlesome postwoman (who ends up playing the keyboard in Rita’s band), Rita Rocks is a back-to-basics multi-camera sitcom that uses the sharp comedic talents of its stars and writers to stay competitive in a TV market saturated with reality shows, single-camera sitcoms, and an avalanche of nearly identical talent competitions. Ironically, it’s those same talent competitions that made the script for Rita Rocks a viable product after floating between networks for ten years, posits Berg: “It took the zeitgeist of American Idol for the industry to realize that people were interested in music and seeing everyday people sing.”

In this Advocate.com exclusive, Zimmerman and Berg shed some light on the surprisingly closeted atmosphere backstage on The Golden Girls, the unique position of queer voices in Hollywood, and the epic civil rights-themed Broadway musical they’re writing with Cindy Lauper.