You Have Got to be Kidding Me
I'm not really sure what the hell it is I'm supposed to be doing right now. I'm reasonably sure blogging is not it, but I need a break from banging my head on the wall. I'm trying to write a spec script and it's a fucking nightmare. For those of you unfamiliar with the lingo, a spec script is a writing sample based on an existing television show. You write an episode of a show and then use it to try and get jobs. I've never written one before and it's killing me. I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I feel like slitting my wrists. But I have to write one. I HAVE TO.
The first problem is coming up with a show to write a spec for. In my adult life, I haven't watched much TV, and the last sit-com I watched regularly before this past year was, I don't know, M*A*S*H or Cheers or something. I got a job here as a production assistant two years ago when the show was in its first season, but I didn't start watching it until this year when I got this writers' assistant gig. I wasn't even really sure what this gig was when I took it -- I just knew it was a step up from dumping trash and that it involved writing. (This may come as a real kick in the ass to anyone out there who's got a drawer full of specs and would kill to be a writers' assistant for a TV show, but I totally lucked into this job). However, since I started in July, I've come to learn that the writers' assistant job is basically the minor leagues of television writing. And since the job I'm working on is a sit-com, it only makes sense that I would be working on a sit-com spec. So, I've upped my number of sit-com viewing hours and I've found a few shows that I really enjoy: Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, The Office. Okay, so I pick Curb or The Office (since A.D. was cancelled and Extras is British) and away I go...
OR
I sit in front of my computer paralyzed by my absolute ignorance of how to write for TV. I know a hell of a lot more about it now than I did in May, but, still, just to sit down and be funny? Ouch. My humor is more along the lines of the smart-ass comeback variety. I'm not sure I know how to write a joke. Okay, I am sure. I don't know how to write a joke. This little nugget of self-knowledge is not going to keep me from trying because, face it, I need a career. Sure, in my younger days, I wanted to be a novelist, a journalist, a Doctor Without A Border saving little kids in faraway lands. But, I'm none of those things. What I am is a 34-year-old burnout staring down the long barrel of his wasted youth, asking himself, "What the hell happened?" So, now my future comes down to me being funny. On purpose. For television. I don't know how I got here.
Boo hoo, right? Poor me. That's not at all what I'm saying. I know how lucky I am and what a great opportunity has been presented to me. I mean, my bosses are fantastic people -- warm, generous, and totally willing to read anything I put in front of them. The other two assistants on this job are most likely getting scripts to write for this season, and I'm sure they'd give me one if they had anything to read from me. But, they don't. They will. But, they don't. Yet.
My girlfriend came back from one of her business trips (Mexico, this time) last night and we talked for a while about the future -- mine, hers, ours. We want to live in NYC and get an apartment together, eventually marry, have some young'uns, the whole nine yards. But NYC is not the town for a bourgeoning sit-com writing career. Every writer I work with is from L.A. They're all going back to L.A. Our show is the only sit-com in the City. It's not like I can just go be a writers' assistant for another show once this one's over. And if we don't get picked back up for another season, I could be sitting here three months from now with only the memories of my lovely time in TV land as compensation for the last three years of my life. Want-ads in one hand, dick in the other, as it were. Fuck.
So, what's a boy to do? Going back to school is always an option. I don't know if that's economically feasible but I'm pretty sure I could write my way into City College. Take a job in another industry -- start out as some low-level assistant (again) and try to work my way up to wherever up is. I don't know what industry that would be exactly. All I've ever wanted to do was read and write so I guess it would have something to do with that. NYC is a good place for that sort of thing. Probably a little easier if you're a 23-year-old girl from a private liberal arts college but not impossible for a 30-nothing goofball without a clue as to how the real world actually works.
Christ, I'm going to make myself puke thinking about this shit. It's like everything I do in life is some anecdote to put in my memoir, another page in the "long look back on an extraordinary life." As if there will be a day when I'll just wake up an accomplished author with the luxuries of hindsight and a convenient sense of revisionism. "I remember those days -- the fights, the drinking, the jokes... We were young, fierce. And so fucking lazy." It was fine when I was in my 20s and really believed that it would somehow all work itself out -- I was too smart, too good-looking, too goddam ME for it to do anything other than all work out. Why would I need to actually do anything? Someday, the words would just start gushing forth and all I'd have to do is smoke cigarettes and look good in black-and-white photographs. The endless slew of restaurant and bar jobs, the drinking, the drugs, the hours spent in a stupor on one stained couch or another -- this was all Material. Material for The Book. It was all going into The Book. One day.
I'm afraid that day has come. And guess what? There's no book. There's no book because I haven't written it. I haven't written anything in years. But that's all about to change. I'm going to write every day from now on. I'm going to write blog entries, long and detailed e-mails to friends, love letters to my lady, the first three chapters of The Book, and yes, a goddam spec script. I'm going to be prolific and profound, drawing on years of Life Experience to compose beautiful, meaningful stories bound to make'em laugh until they cry. The Great and Terrible Personal Revolution of 2005 has begun, and you are here to witness it's insemination, that precise moment when the shuddering orgasm of release fulfills the promise of a new life. Oh, you lucky few, you privileged ones.
The first problem is coming up with a show to write a spec for. In my adult life, I haven't watched much TV, and the last sit-com I watched regularly before this past year was, I don't know, M*A*S*H or Cheers or something. I got a job here as a production assistant two years ago when the show was in its first season, but I didn't start watching it until this year when I got this writers' assistant gig. I wasn't even really sure what this gig was when I took it -- I just knew it was a step up from dumping trash and that it involved writing. (This may come as a real kick in the ass to anyone out there who's got a drawer full of specs and would kill to be a writers' assistant for a TV show, but I totally lucked into this job). However, since I started in July, I've come to learn that the writers' assistant job is basically the minor leagues of television writing. And since the job I'm working on is a sit-com, it only makes sense that I would be working on a sit-com spec. So, I've upped my number of sit-com viewing hours and I've found a few shows that I really enjoy: Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, The Office. Okay, so I pick Curb or The Office (since A.D. was cancelled and Extras is British) and away I go...
OR
I sit in front of my computer paralyzed by my absolute ignorance of how to write for TV. I know a hell of a lot more about it now than I did in May, but, still, just to sit down and be funny? Ouch. My humor is more along the lines of the smart-ass comeback variety. I'm not sure I know how to write a joke. Okay, I am sure. I don't know how to write a joke. This little nugget of self-knowledge is not going to keep me from trying because, face it, I need a career. Sure, in my younger days, I wanted to be a novelist, a journalist, a Doctor Without A Border saving little kids in faraway lands. But, I'm none of those things. What I am is a 34-year-old burnout staring down the long barrel of his wasted youth, asking himself, "What the hell happened?" So, now my future comes down to me being funny. On purpose. For television. I don't know how I got here.
Boo hoo, right? Poor me. That's not at all what I'm saying. I know how lucky I am and what a great opportunity has been presented to me. I mean, my bosses are fantastic people -- warm, generous, and totally willing to read anything I put in front of them. The other two assistants on this job are most likely getting scripts to write for this season, and I'm sure they'd give me one if they had anything to read from me. But, they don't. They will. But, they don't. Yet.
My girlfriend came back from one of her business trips (Mexico, this time) last night and we talked for a while about the future -- mine, hers, ours. We want to live in NYC and get an apartment together, eventually marry, have some young'uns, the whole nine yards. But NYC is not the town for a bourgeoning sit-com writing career. Every writer I work with is from L.A. They're all going back to L.A. Our show is the only sit-com in the City. It's not like I can just go be a writers' assistant for another show once this one's over. And if we don't get picked back up for another season, I could be sitting here three months from now with only the memories of my lovely time in TV land as compensation for the last three years of my life. Want-ads in one hand, dick in the other, as it were. Fuck.
So, what's a boy to do? Going back to school is always an option. I don't know if that's economically feasible but I'm pretty sure I could write my way into City College. Take a job in another industry -- start out as some low-level assistant (again) and try to work my way up to wherever up is. I don't know what industry that would be exactly. All I've ever wanted to do was read and write so I guess it would have something to do with that. NYC is a good place for that sort of thing. Probably a little easier if you're a 23-year-old girl from a private liberal arts college but not impossible for a 30-nothing goofball without a clue as to how the real world actually works.
Christ, I'm going to make myself puke thinking about this shit. It's like everything I do in life is some anecdote to put in my memoir, another page in the "long look back on an extraordinary life." As if there will be a day when I'll just wake up an accomplished author with the luxuries of hindsight and a convenient sense of revisionism. "I remember those days -- the fights, the drinking, the jokes... We were young, fierce. And so fucking lazy." It was fine when I was in my 20s and really believed that it would somehow all work itself out -- I was too smart, too good-looking, too goddam ME for it to do anything other than all work out. Why would I need to actually do anything? Someday, the words would just start gushing forth and all I'd have to do is smoke cigarettes and look good in black-and-white photographs. The endless slew of restaurant and bar jobs, the drinking, the drugs, the hours spent in a stupor on one stained couch or another -- this was all Material. Material for The Book. It was all going into The Book. One day.
I'm afraid that day has come. And guess what? There's no book. There's no book because I haven't written it. I haven't written anything in years. But that's all about to change. I'm going to write every day from now on. I'm going to write blog entries, long and detailed e-mails to friends, love letters to my lady, the first three chapters of The Book, and yes, a goddam spec script. I'm going to be prolific and profound, drawing on years of Life Experience to compose beautiful, meaningful stories bound to make'em laugh until they cry. The Great and Terrible Personal Revolution of 2005 has begun, and you are here to witness it's insemination, that precise moment when the shuddering orgasm of release fulfills the promise of a new life. Oh, you lucky few, you privileged ones.
posted by Guts at 11:31 AM
1 Comments:
and there it is--the jumpstart. bravo.
look forward to reading more...the jokes will start flowing, you are one of the funniest people i know (besides myself of course). lo puedes hacer!
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