"Our reward for Starsky and Hutch was getting to write The Six Million Dollar Man for Todd"

Thomas Lennon is using a dry, insider’s shorthand to describe how Hollywood actually doles out opportunity: the real prize for doing well on one studio project is being invited onto the next one, often by the same power player. “Reward” isn’t a trophy or acclaim; it’s access, another assignment, another check, another swing at the plate. By pairing Starsky & Hutch with The Six Million Dollar Man, he highlights a specific moment in the early 2000s when studios chased nostalgia by rebooting 1970s TV brands as glossy, star-driven comedies. The mechanism runs on relationships, so “for Todd” matters as much as the title. Todd is Todd Phillips, a director-producer whose taste and clout could open doors. Doing right by his film led to the privilege of writing for his next package.

There’s also a wink at the writer’s place in the pecking order. The phrasing implies they executed well enough within someone else’s sandbox to be trusted with another sandbox. Success begets more of the same: crack a wry, IP-based action-comedy and the system slots you into the next IP-based action-comedy. It’s both validation and typecasting. Lennon, who with Robert Ben Garant chronicled this treadmill in their guide to studio screenwriting, knows that “reward” often means another development gauntlet, possibly on a movie that may never shoot. The job is the victory.

At the same time, it’s not cynical so much as pragmatic. In studio comedy, momentum is currency. Attachments are ladders. A director’s goodwill can matter as much as box office. The line captures the transactional symbiosis: writers help a director land and shape a project; the director shepherds those writers into the next one. Beneath the breezy tone sits a blueprint for survival in Hollywood: deliver on a known property, cultivate the relationship, and your best compensation is the chance to do it again, bigger, faster, and hopefully with your name on the poster this time.