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The strike is over!!! Some reflections ... but first, the best part of blogging: the opportunity to meet our audience -- you -- and share some thoughts.

To those of who have read my book and been kind enough to e-mail me about it, my deepest thanks. Writing a book (or a movie or a play or a television show) is, I suspect, like giving birth to a child. After the long period of gestation, you emerge with it in your arms and a wary, hopeful smile on your face. What will people think? What will they say? Will they welcome your creation or shun it?

The critical and public reaction to Inside Inside has been all I could have hoped for -- but nothing can beat the immediate, person-to-person response of a Web site.

Kristen, Darlene, Dave (from Vienna!), Patty P., Karina (from Rome!), my heartfelt thanks for your kind, considerate words.

Susan, we've just finished editing the Robin Williams DVD, and have been able to restore nearly forty hilarious minutes that we were heartbroken to leave behind when it aired in 2001. There were moments in the edit room last week when we were laughing so hard that we couldn't hear Robin on the screen, and had to take a break before resuming the edit. I think it will be available to you in June.

Now -- to the strike. 100 days -- that's how long it lasted -- and of all the interview programs and talk shows on television, Inside the Actors Studio was the only one that honored the strike from first day to last -- which wasn't easy since Inside is the only show that is wholly owned by a not-for-profit educational institution, the Actors Studio.

But the strike is over, and we've resumed casting this Spring's shows, and soon we'll be shooting them. One thing I learned from the strike (which I already suspected) is that I'm not designed for leisure. Since, once again uniquely among shows like Inside the Actors Studio, I do my own homework, it takes me two full seven-day weeks of 10- to 14-hour days to prepare the three or four hundred blue cards you see in front of me on each show.