No, not Bakersfield. Hollywood.
I now have enough time and distance from my former career in Hollywood to finally realize an important aspect of it:
It is seriously fucked up.
I still do occasional work for a handful of agencies in "The Biz". The kids they employ these days are absolute whizzes on the computer, but they can't think for shit. So the agencies come back to us old-timers, the people they laid off, to generate enough ideas to keep the youngins busy. And such was the call I received on Wednesday:
Hollywood: "Hey! You up for working on some ideas for a new TV show? It's a comedy. On Fox."
Me: "Absolutely.... what's it called?"
H: "They don't have a title for it yet."
Me: "OK.... what's it about?"
H: "Single girl discovers her finance cheating on her, moves out and in with her best guy buddy. And his roommates."
Me: "... and the roommates are wacky, right?"
H: "Of course."
Me: "Who's in it?"
H: "Some indie film chick.... don't have her name. She's quirky. The guys are nobodies."
Me: "Where is it set?"
H: "We don't know."
Me: "What do they do? Are they slackers or professionals or what?"
H: "We don't know."
Me: "You're not giving me a lot to work with..."
H: "Just make it funny. The four of them. Funny. And quirky. But no couches. Don't do any ideas with couches. Fox hates couches."
Me: "Huh? Why?"
H: "We don't know."
Me: "So it's kind of like 'Friends'?"
H: "It is, but it's not. Make it 'Friends'-like, without being 'Friends'".
Alrighty then. So, being the consummate professional that I am, I banged out about two dozen ideas, none of them with couches, and emailed them off yesterday.
So this morning they call back.
H: "They LOVED everything. But they want to go a different direction."
Me: "Great... what is it?"
H: "They saw this ad for 'Weeds'.... it's whats-her-name and she's holding a huge chain."
Me: "Why a chain? I don't watch the show."
H: "We don't know. But Fox loves the idea of a prop. A girl with a prop. No guys. Just a girl. And a prop."
Me: "What kind of prop?"
H: "That's up to you. That's why we hired you. Come up with ideas of the girl with a prop."
Me: "But... I know next to nothing about the show, I don't know where it's set, I don't know what this girl's character does. Where am I supposed to find some props if I know nothing about the show?"
H: "Just make it funny. It doesn't really matter."
Me: "So I should just choose random shit? A softball? A whip? A timebomb? What?"
H: "As long as it's funny. The timebomb probably isn't funny. But the whip... that's funny. More ideas like that."
Oy vey.
So I just emailed off my 'prop' ideas. I hope I don't hear back from them. I never thought I'd see the day I'd rather work on John Deere tractor ads than the crap coming out of Hollywood. But such is life.
