Kitty Lessons

Well it’s been months and months since Steven and I got the news that THIS LITTLE PIGGY was not going to go to series and I think I’m finally getting my head above water. But that first few weeks after hearing the “Great Job, but no thanks” of it all, was not fun. Suffice it to say that alcohol was my constant companion and there was some concern that if I didn’t change the miserable face I kept wearing it might stick that way, adding insult to my already injured looks. Anyway, I’ve had many requests from the folks who were reading this blog to add a little closure to this chapter. Apparently, many of you want to know what happens to a TV writer when both of his projects crap out. Well since the sting has finally faded, I thought I’d take a moment to try and answer that question. Here goes…

Initially, I decided that a good idea would be for me to spend some time with pals that I had neglected during the pilot madness. You know, to get my mind off it all. I remember having a great lunch with my friend Mark who sat with me over plates of barbeque and listened to me ramble like a mad man about the unfairness of this filthy, dirty, lying carnival of a business. And a dinner with my buddy Matt and his son Greg, who sat with me over burgers and beers and listened to me bitch about the same. Greg is a toddler, he wasn’t drinking beer or, at the time, speaking (he says avocado now!) and I remember him just staring up at me silently. I must have looked like a loon to him as I prattled on and on without as much as a comma to break up the crazy. No doubt there was some truth to this. I’m lucky to have patient friends who don’t mind red meat and maudlin talk.

My agent Jack once told me that getting a television show on the air is like winning several lotteries in a row. First you have to pitch your show, and out of a sea of ideas, the development people have to choose yours. That’s lottery number one. Then they pay you to write it and the work begins. You have to figure out how to best tell your story in the most effective and efficient way you can. Eventually you do (or you do your best anyway) and you turn it in and wait for the results of lottery number two. If they choose your script, out of dozens and dozens of other scripts they’ve also paid for, you get to make a television pilot. For the uninitiated… and there are few of you out there… a pilot is a one time episode of television about people America doesn’t know or care about yet, that needs to somehow be entertaining while clearly setting up the premise, stakes and tone of any future episodes… you know, if the network chooses to make them… which, of course, there is no guarantee they will do.

And with that little mission laid before you, you set off to make your show (or in our case, shows). You go through a half dozen other mini-lotteries (getting a director, hiring a producer, casting the damned thing, etc) and then you shoot it and turn it in and wait for the results of lottery number three. The odds are never good. In fact you are more likely to win a football parlay at the OTB than you are to get a show picked up for series on the ABC. I believe there were more than 100 pilots (drama and comedy) made by all the networks, cable and broadcast. Of that number, maybe 20 of them got picked up to series. The rest, including our little gems, will never see the light of day. That’s the deal. That’s how it works. The rest is whiny blogs, barbeque and beer. So what now?

Well part of that question is answered by the fact that Cragg and I were offered and agreed to a two year overall deal with ABC Studios. That means they pay us a lovely salary, give us an assistant and an office on the lot, and we give them dibs on anything we write as well as the right to assign us to any show they have on the air or in development (in fact we're "consulting producers" right now on a mid-season comedy called HAPPY ENDINGS). Basically we’re their willing slaves. But this is the “good” kind of slavery. The kind that many writers hope for and do not get a chance to achieve. And it’s a miracle really for two guys who, eighteen months ago, were virtually unknown. So yes, in the fantastically complicated logic of Hollywood, you can spend ten million dollars of their money making two failed pilots (one of them TWICE!) and instead of kicking you to the curb they give you a whole bunch more money to think up more pilots which, according to the lottery theory, will probably fail as well. So… there’s that.

But that’s just the mechanics of the business. The real answer to the question of what’s next for us lies in the same shabby place it always has: our brains, our noodles, our thinkin’ meat. At some point, whether it’s in a fancy office on the lot or, as has frequently been the case with me, on the shitter, we have to come up with a new idea and start this entire process over again. And that, my brothers and sisters, is the hard part. This difficulty is partially due to exhaustion (for more information on that please read my previous whiny blogs) and partially due to some reticence to jump back into this whole maddening system again. Hollywood is a massive meat grinder into which you jam good ideas and everyone’s best intentions and if you don’t like the sausage that oozes out the other side, well it’s hard to get excited about making more. But that’s the deal. And the willingness to do just that is what separates the men from the boys. Absorbing that truth is about the most important thing you can do. And I’m trying. I really am. But lately I’ve been thinking that I need to be more like my cat. Was that a horrible transition? You bet it was. But stay with me here!

You see my cat is obsessed. Our neighborhood is home to two or three scraggly “outdoor” cats who make their scraggly way here and there all day long. There is one skinny gray tiger striped kitty whose territory includes our yard. He (I think it’s a he) saunters by in intervals throughout the day like a bored soldier on patrol. And whenever he does, Chani (our fat gray tabby) runs to the sliding glass door in a state of keen alarm. As he passes, Chani will track his path, moving from window to window until he is out of her eyesight. This scenario plays itself out seven or eight times a day, but she never seems to tire of it or get used to it or get bored with it or get discouraged buy it. In fact, aside from eating and sleeping, this activity seems to be her sole focus. And to be honest, I envy her. She doesn’t care how many times she fails to make contact with the other cat. It doesn’t discourage her that her last attempt, the one she really thought was going to succeed, ended up just like the other two thousand puffy tailed, stand offs she’s had through that screen door. She is a machine. She is focused. She is driven. Granted, this is probably because she has a brain the size of a walnut, but I like her chutzpa just the same. And, I believe, she will have her scratchy brawl with the gray cat some day. And when that happens I hope her show goes to series and is a big hit… I mean, I hope the, uh, cat fight goes well… for her.

So there you go brothers and sisters, that’s the answer to what happens to you after your pilots shit the bed and you are left wondering why. You get sad, complain a lot, drink too much and then realize you have to be more like your cat. Except for the anus licking. She licks her anus a lot. Too much in my opinion.