James Burrows was honored with the Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 and NBC special Must See TV: An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows in 2016.
31 Facts About James Burrows
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James Burrows started his career with The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1974.
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James Burrows has directed over 50 television pilots and co-created the television series Cheers.
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James Burrows has formed 3 Sisters Entertainment, a joint venture with NBC.
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James Burrows was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California, the son of Ruth and Abe James Burrows, a well-known composer, director and writer.
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James Burrows is a graduate of Oberlin College and the graduate program of the Yale School of Drama.
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James Burrows then took a job as an assistant stage manager for the 1967 play Holly Golightly, an adaptation of the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.
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Early on, James Burrows worked for the road company of Cactus Flower and the Broadway production of Forty Carats.
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James Burrows went to direct the short lived Broadway play The Castro Complex.
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James Burrows continued working in theater as a stage manager and transitioned into directing plays.
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James Burrows directed traveling plays and a production at a Jacksonville, Florida dinner theater.
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James Burrows is best known for his comic timing, complex blocking for actors, and incorporating more sophisticated lighting in television studio shoots.
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James Burrows is credited as being one of the first sitcom directors to increase the typical multi-camera television shoot from three to four cameras.
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The Charles brothers were former employees of MTM Enterprises and served as producers on the series Taxi where James Burrows worked as in-house director for 76 episodes.
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James Burrows then gained acclaim for directing the NBC sitcom Frasier.
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James Burrows won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for the pilot, The Good Son in 1993.
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James Burrows directed in total 32 episodes from 1993 to 1997.
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In 1998, James Burrows directed a Chicago-based production of the 1939 comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner starring John Mahoney.
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James Burrows directed 15 episodes of another NBC sitcom Friends starring Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, and Lisa Kudrow.
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James Burrows received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for the 1994 episode The One with the Blackout from Season 1.
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James Burrows directed episodes of the NBC sitcoms Wings, NewsRadio, Caroline in the City, and the CBS sitcoms Pearl and George and Leo.
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James Burrows received twelve Primetime Emmy Award nominations for the series winning for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2000.
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James Burrows reunited with Matt LeBlanc with Man with a Plan.
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James Burrows directed the sitcom B Positive starring Annaleigh Ashford.
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James Burrows has directed over 1,000 episodes of television, a milestone he achieved in November 2015 with the NBC sitcom Crowded.
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In 2016, James Burrows directed his 1,000th TV episode, on NBC's Crowded.
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James Burrows received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series for the episode, "We Love Lucy".
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James Burrows has had cameo appearances in several of the shows for which he has directed.
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James Burrows appears as a television director named Jimmy in the 2005 HBO series The Comeback.
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James Burrows is married to celebrity hairstylist Debbie Easton; the couple lives in Manhattan.
31.
James Burrows has won eleven Emmy Awards and five Directors Guild of America Awards.