A writer writes. If your desire is to find an audience, that’s easy. You always have yourself. That first caveman needed to get a thought out so badly he burned his fingers grabbing a coal and probably exaggerated the tale of his bison kill. He chuckled to himself as he drew pears to represent his wife’s boobies, providing the first literary symbolism.
I used to write television. People often ask why I no longer do. I could lean in close, slosh my drink as I gesticulate wildly and tell huge, well-crafted tales of the abuse that little box inflicted upon my art, but I simply explain, that the nature of that business has changed and I write elsewhere. Their eyes glaze over as they search the room for anyone with current credits, perhaps a “Housewife”. I take another roll and let my inner typewriter of justification click away.
Legitimate Hollywood is a fantasyland made up of eyeliner and marshmallow fluff, with a very tall and strong wall around it. Millions are jumping up and down, trying to get even a peek, and hopefully find a way inside. Those who do break in, while grateful to be there, are constantly worried they will be shoved back outside the gates, or worse yet, face shame and ridicule over their latest project and wither away in a sailor’s hat trying to recapture that magical combination in the land of Gilligan.
I got over that wall and wrote sitcoms. I wrote lots of other stuff prior to that, but got extremely lucky, got an agent, wrote on network shows and in the WGA. It’s wonderful. It is something enviable, and I am proud of it. It placed me in a legitimate light, and paid me a lot of money. I loved that part. Sure, there are long hours, but writers, (not me) that catch lightning in a thimble and get on a show that hits syndication, buy second and third homes. When they open their mailbox, rainbows gush out, the show’s corny theme music plays, and a residual check floats out on Agent commission-free air.
But once inside that wall, no one is safe. Every project in show business ends, so everyone is constantly unemployed. Networks cancel shows before they can run in all three time zones. Someone in Manhattan pushes their plate back, and calls LA: I know we spent a million bucks on that crap but I don’t care for it. Run that Asian show about nurses. Nurses sell, and we are all going to be speaking fucking Chinese so get me more of that. I was on one show that would have been a lot funnier if the writing team didn’t have to rush to their offices at every break to call their agents to see what the next job was. Once a show gets cancelled, all of those writers are looking for jobs, and there are only so many to go around.
Writing staffs have decreased. Gone are the days when shows like Roseanne had 32 staff writers. She bought them numbered football jerseys and would point from the stage and bark, You, seventeen, what’s a funnier word for pink? Bottom line is that it’s about the bottom line. Budget cuts have trickled down to the writers, and producers are more likely to dole out freelance assignments than pay a dozen writers $15,000-a-week salaries.
I love the television business but hate the business part. I do not miss the scramble at pilot season, the lies your fellow writers tell about the interviews they did not go on. How many times can you pump yourself up and truly believe that “This Full House spec I wrote is really, really funny!” Writing jobs are like the hot cheerleader in high school: everyone wants her, but she can only put out so much, and half of the stories about bedding her are made up. By writers.
I wrote with a partner, and when we didn’t get staff jobs one year, we parted ways. For me to write television again, I would have to write all new spec scripts, and frankly I don’t want to. Television has been very good, but it is not good now. Non-writing network execs give script notes like, Could she wear a sweater in this scene? I think sweaters are funny. We’d have to write to that. If it takes all night you have to address that note and make sweaters funny. Trust me, at four in the morning it isn’t any funnier. Besides, it’s culottes that are funny, but no one listens to me.
I wanted to keep writing, but didn’t know what I wanted to write. I wrote an online sitcom, and was happy to be hip and learn that new medium. Turned out to be a TV wolf in online clothing. The brilliant dialogue and wacky scenarios I created were still ads, just clickable. Yes, Madison Avenue controlled the internet sitcom too. When I was just a television viewer, I didn’t know advertising drove television show sales. As a television writer, I learned that pilots might be produced in LA, but are flown to NYC where Mad Men sip martinis in fancy screening rooms and decide if Geico or Bounce would buy the shows.
Then I jumped on the blogwagon. The modern day diary. That damn free internet. But is it free? I built a website for my stories and monetized it, on which Google places ads. While reading my story about forgetting to serve a salad at a dinner party, you might see an ad for a Geico and click on it and Google sends me a check for .37, coincidentally the size of some of my television residual checks.
I had a fine home for my stories, but perhaps the greed and blood I tasted from television led me to search for other legitimate outlets for my rants. The senior editor from HuffPo called me and praised my storytelling, asking me to contribute to them. Her call gave me that wonderful ego high, the same when I got my first television assignment. It is like that great feeling you get when someone smiles at you, and their smile makes you smile. I get a little rush from that, and sometimes, not so little.
For me, the format of a half-hour television series is limiting. Limited not just by time, but also by the very situation of the show, and network censors. You have to have a certain number of jokes per page, and make sure you end every scene on a joke that is ruined by whichever actor has the biggest salary and most fragile ego.
Outside the strictures of the sitcom, I can write like Prometheus unbound. Writing stories gives me the freedom to write hundred of thousands of words and actually complete a thought without writing to a commercial break. I can develop characters without plugging in their trademarked tagline. With a half-hour script, I was ruled by a stopwatch, and had to cut priceless, hilarious jokes because of time. That, or the actor stepped on the joke, perhaps because the network wouldn’t let them wear the “glasses” they picked up at Yale Drama School.
It’s not only Faye Dunaway who can’t find work in Hollywood. Writers face age discrimination, too. It always struck me as idiotic that networks hire writers out of college to run shows. While an Ivy League education provides the technical skill one needs to write, I would rather hear the stories the actual old ivy growing on the walls might tell. Often, starlets have to pack their bags because their looks fade, but no one can see through a typewriter. The decaying Cryptkeeper can submit his work to blog and book editors; no one cares how old you are in other journalistic outlets. Put on a glamorous Jane Jetson mask for a Skype call if needed. Give me a writer who fought in Viet Nam, who has war stories, and still knows how to navigate the interweb and buy clothes on Gap.com. At 22, you pretty much just have the Gap thing.
Television is disposable journalism. You reach down in your soul, tell secrets and put them out there for the world to laugh at, and Middle America just has the show on in the background as noise to accompany their hand-held Angry Birds game. Stories, novels and even blogs live more permanently. Written words are longer lasting. When people are gone and apes rule the planet, one of them might hap upon a crumbling library and pull a dusty copy of A Confederacy of Dunces off the shelf and chuckle.
I am vey grateful for the chance I had to write television. I followed early advice from a seasoned veteran and bought something with a portion of the money from each script so that I would always have something to show for it. I did pick up mementos and have the eternal listings on IMDb.
The trick with television writing is to stuff your bags with cash and get out of town. Move where there is less traffic and no state income tax, and spend your days pursuing altruistic endeavors, like helping Tippi Hedren with those lions.
And write. A writer writes.
Image of vintage television courtesy of Shutterstock