In which our hero eats free food, explains his origins and learns nicknames - but does very little writing.
I have a real problem showing up on time to first days.
I’m afraid of becoming indispensable, you see. Because I’m an artist. And as an artist, in a non-artistic job, I shouldn’t be counted on for anything.
Since every job I’ve ever held (lumber boy, stock boy, office lackey, office manager, Greenpeace salesman) hasn’t had much to do with my ambitions, (writer, actor, tinpot dictator, bearded revolutionary) I make a point of becoming the “don’t go-to guy,” the “when it absolutely has to get done, ask someone else” guy.
Hell, even Greenpeace fired me. It takes commitment to get fired by Greenpeace.
Naturally, when I landed a job writing an episode of a well-known, respected sitcom, I figured that this would be the one job I’d show up to on time. They told me to be there at ten, and I’d be there at ten, dammit.
I walk in at 10:15.
Behavior like this is what keeps me in therapy.
On arriving, my writing partner, Hammy, tells me the producers wouldn’t be arriving until 10:30. This meant that no work would get started until 11:00. Furthermore, the producers were behind schedule, so they wouldn’t be getting around to our episode.
We toss up our hands and do the only thing we can - grab a bunch of free food out of the office kitchen and write filthy captions under a picture of Alyssa Milano.
(The picture of Alyssa Milano was tacked to a bulletin board. It showed Alyssa on the set of the sitcom, grasping her breasts while chatting with one of the writers. I wrote under the picture “You’ll have to excuse me—I’m lactating.” Anyway.)
How did I get here?
Let’s go back to 1997: I was working full-time as an office manager for an executive search firm. My days were filled with reprimanding my one-man data entry staff, punching up the resumes of union-busting lawyers and toothpaste marketers, hunting down apparel companies for money they owed us and playing video games. On my off hours, I’d check to make sure I still had a soul.
The one saving grace of my existence was that I was - technically - still in college. I had six credits to go. Three of the credits were being filled by drinking heavily with the producers of Moonwork (we called it an internship) and the other three were being filled by writing a play. I was showing my drafts to Suave Alex, who’d never had a problem telling me when my writing sucked. Oddly enough, we’re still friends.
My usual pattern was to go up to campus on Sunday and type up my scenes in the computer lab all afternoon. I would leave one draft with my faculty sponsor (I wisely chose the busiest professor in the theatre program for my faculty sponsor) and one with Suave Alex.
Earlier that day, Suave Alex told me to leave the draft at the bar where his girlfriend worked—the Raccoon Lodge.
Ahh, the Raccoon. The former home of Marymount imbibers - where the pints were cheap, the atmosphere was dank and your classmates were bartending. If you were coming in alone, you sat by the taps so’s you could talk to the bartender - still, one would have to shake off the advances of various middle-aged barflies, both male and female. If you were coming in with a group you’d take a seat at one of the rickety booths, where you’d have to clear off and wipe down the tables yourself. And still, the tables were stickier than flypaper.
God, I miss that place.
So I walked into the Raccoon Lodge early Sunday evening. Suave Alex's girlfriend wasn't working... but a devastatingly cute barmaid named Doris was. I left the draft with her and was about to leave when I remembered something.
I was single and horny.
So I sat down, ordered a beer and started leafing through my draft, pretending to make corrections. After a few minutes of this I turned to Doris and said, “Hey, have you ever heard of a drink called a Gasping Frog?”
“Nope,” she replied.
“Well, I’m playwright and—“
“Oh, I’m an actress!”
Of course you are, I thought.
“Really! Imagine that,” I said. “Well, maybe as a fellow theatre person, you can help me out. I have a character in this play who comes up with a drink called a Gasping Frog. It has to be strong and green.”
Doris went for the Midori and the 151. I was beginning to fall in love with Doris.
After trying about three versions of a Gasping Frog, I realized the flaw in my little plan - it’s very hard to pick up a woman when you’re drunk while she’s not, and she’s working while you’re not. But still, Doris only charged me for my first beer. Come to think of it, maybe the reason I’m attracted to actresses is because of the free drinks - but that’s neither here nor there.
About two hours later, Viking-Ben arrived to relieve Doris.
At this point, I should have remembered that it was Sunday night and I had a day job - a day job which would make me cry “Somebody kill me!!!!” every Monday morning - and that was when I hadn’t been drinking the night before. I should have also remembered that Viking-Ben was one of three Marymount students who could drink me under the table - and would take pleasure in doing so. Doris was also leaving, so my original reason for sticking around was gone.
Instead, I turned to Viking-Ben and said, “Hey, ya crazy bastid! Ya ever heard of a Gasping Frog?”
Bad, bad idea.
Five minutes later three hours had gone by and I was pretty damn loaded.
Enter Hammy and Joey The Face, already three sheets to the wind.
Hammy and Joey The Face had just come from the Rangers game—they’d tied Edmonton, 2-2. (There’s something very wrong with any sport that ALLOWS ties, in my opinion—but that’s off the subject.) Now, I’d heard from Laurie (Viking-Ben’s girlfriend and one of a large group of women who calls Hammy “The Pig,” in this case because he took Viking-Ben to a strip club junket in Montreal) that Hammy was working as a writer’s assistant at The Sitcom. All things considered, it’s good that I’m not a violent drunk, else I might have pummeled Hammy over the head with my good-luck-getting-it-produced play, exclaiming, “That should be ME at The Sitcom! ME!!!”
Instead, I bought us all a round of Gasping Frogs and said, “So Hammy! I hear you’ve got a new job.”
Hammy filled me in on everything - the under the table bonuses, the chatting with celebrities, the fact that he didn’t have to go into work until four PM...
As I was trying to fashion my sixty unproducable pages into an adequate club, Hammy said “Ya know what? Those, those…whaddaya call ‘em? They type and... oh yeah, those writers over at the show, they’re runnin’ out of ideas. Ya wanna write a script with me an’ see if we c’n sell it?”
“Damn straight I do!” I replied, unrolling my play.
Then Hammy broached the subject of a partnership, which I was unsure about. After all, I was a playwright. I had principles.
“Look you pretentious fuck,” Joey The Face said. “You can stick to your principles once you can AFFORD them!”
I really like Joey The Face.
I got home around 6AM Monday morning. I woke up at eight AM, still drunk. I was too tired to scream “Somebody kill me!!!”
And I’d completely forgotten about Hammy.
By Tuesday, I’d pretty much gotten rid of the hangover. Hammy called me that night and said, “They’re still out of ideas here! So are we partners?”
“Who are you again?” I replied.
Actually, we got together later on that week. I was still uncomfortable about the whole TV writing thing. See, as an artist, I figured that getting paid to do my creative work would make me a sellout. In fact, back in college, Hammy suggested that I should be writing sitcoms.
“Sitcoms!” I cried. “HA! I’m a playwright! You might as well tell a dancer that she should strip!”
No, really. I actually said that.
So with my doubts, I came to the sitcom’s offices to meet Hammy. And he gave me floppy disks, sodas and dinner – all on the sitcom’s tab.
Lo, I was converted.
We got to writing. It didn’t take long before we settled into a pattern. I could type quicker, so I became Plot Guy, (and I’d written about ten plays) which made Hammy the Joke Doctor by default (and he’d spent six months around comedy writers).
After about ten hours of work on our first script, we realized something. It was crap.
We went back to the Big Erasable Board at two AM Sunday morning and did a complete overhaul on the outline. We finished Act One by seven AM, then took naps. I woke up at ten AM to find Hammy working on Act Two.
I was beginning to like working with this guy.
By four PM, the script was done. Of course, we did many rewrites of it in the following months, but most of it was there already. One script = fourteen hours. Two more years of shoving spec scripts under office doors, working after hours on the Big Erasable Board, and kissing a bucketful of ass finally got us noticed.
In we walk to the TV Outpost with our One Script=Fourteen Hours formula. In reality, One Script = Four Weeks.
Here's why.
A little bit after noon, we get called into the Big Room and are introduced to assorted writers and producers. - Bucky, Jones, Cally, Sherr, Hertz, Hobie, Wen-Fu, The Load Warrior, The Champ, Hot Mary and The Girlfriend of Big Cock.
They like the nicknames on the big TV show.
Hobie shakes my hand. "So you're Hammy’s partner,” he says. “Read your specs, good stuff. You smoke a lotta pot, don't you?"
As it turns out, this was meant as a compliment.
Quick floor plan: There were two conference rooms at the big sitcom; the Big Room and the Small Room, which is pretty self-explanatory. (The small room was also Cally and Wen-fu’s office, which pretty neatly explains their status on the show.) Each room had a large conference table, a couple of Big Erasable Boards, a couch, many chairs, and toys.
So I’m sitting in the Big Room, listening to the writers complain about Priscilla Presley (more about her later), when Bucky pushes a matchbox car shaped like a blimp across the table at me. I take it and push it back at him. It falls off the table. I cry out, “Oh, the humanity!”
Nothing. Not even a giggle.
In retrospect, I don’t think a humorist should ever expect to get much out of 1930’s dirigible jokes.
Bucky just picks up the blimp and pushes it back at me. I push it back to him. Et cetera.
Still, no one’s speaking to me, not even Bucky, who I’m playing with. I’m just pushing the blimp.
On about the third or fourth exchange, I get the blimp to roll to the very edge of the table without falling off. Half of the writers in the room see this and say, “Oooooooh.”
I am accepted.
We spend the day trying to revamp an outline of Sherr and The Champ’s script. Sherr appears to be “driving the bus,” and doing a fair job of it. The script has some really difficult stories in it, which everyone blames on Billyidol (the Executive Producer) and Michael (the star). And they have a point.
The day before, Hammy got to sit in with the writers. They were discussing a scene that involved Michael refereeing a fight for no apparent reason. At one point, Hammy said, “I don’t know if out of line here, but… wouldn’t it make more sense to have Paul do the referee bit? He can do slapstick and his character isn’t supposed to be in Washington DC when the scene happens.”
Bucky got up from his chair and said “Aw, listen to the new kid!” Then he gave Hammy a big hug and a little noogie.
“Hammy, we know the scene would work better with Paul," Bucky said. "But Michael hasn’t been in our last two scenes. He’s the star. We’ve got to shove him in here or lose our jobs trying.”
This is one of the many reasons why writing a sitcom script on the TV Outpost takes four weeks, rather than twelve hours.
Another is that everyone fucks off to play foosball at four o’clock.
Still another is when the Executive Producer tells you that a storyline for your first televised script involves turning an actor invisible...
No, really. I'm not making that up.
NEXT: Our Story Begins, The Comedy Gorilla, Bucky In Rehab, and Just Because It Happened In A Burt Reynolds Movie Does Not Mean It Works.
Posted by J.O.S.Hartung at August 12, 2003 12:37 PM