‘Your problem,” a friend of mine told me yesterday, “is that you’re a pessimist.”
“Define pessimist,” I said, a little too loudly to pretend that his comment hadn’t bothered me. “Is it quote pessimistic unquote to prepare yourself for the bad news that you know is on the way?”
At which point, as you can imagine, I had pretty much lost the debate.
We were talking about the likelihood that my new project – a very darkly comic half-hour show for an American cable television network – was going to move forward. Last autumn, we shot a pilot, or test, episode for the network executives to pick at and mull over, and it seemed to go over very well. We managed to assemble all of the elements crucial to the success of an American television venture: there’s a major television star in the cast, there’s a healthy amount of salty language in the dialogue, there are one or two moments of explosively unexpected violence, and there’s even a brief moment of heartfelt emotion. In other words, everything you need for a hit television show, we had.
When we turned the final edited version into the network in early December, we were exhausted but elated. “This is the best pilot you’ve ever done,” my agent said to me, which ordinarily wouldn’t mean anything – agents are supposed to say things like that – but in this case, packed a serious punch. My agent is young, and part of the “keeping it real” generation, so when he likes my work he tells me, and when he doesn’t like it he tells me that, too. It’s infuriating, but at least he’s consistent.
“It’s a very specific product for a very specific audience,” he once said to me about a television series I created. He was too clever and cagey to say what he really felt – that it was slightly downscale work that probably cemented my reputation in Hollywood as an old-time comedy writing hack – but the message was clear: make the next project something special.
Which, from the moment the script was finished to the last shot on the set, I was convinced this new project really was. Of course, it’s impossible to navigate anything as complicated and turbulent as a film project without utter confidence and commitment – in that way, friends of mine who are parents tell me, show business is a lot like child raising, only slightly less expensive. You have to believe it’s all going to turn out splendidly.
The glow on this particular project lasted all the way to the moment we turned in the final version and heard nothing.
It was the beginning of the holidays, of course, and that meant it was received by a distracted and mostly on-holiday network executive team. But as Christmas turned to New Year and New Year turned to plain old back-to-work January, the eerie silence from a network that was once so enthusiastic has started to sound a lot less like silence and a lot more like someone shouting: “We don’t like it!”
“You know what that is?” my friend said to me. “That’s what we call catastrophic thinking. In the absence of any real information, your mind is conjuring the worst possible scenario.”
“The worst possible but most realistic scenario,” I responded.
He shook his head. He reminded me that the network is obligated to announce several new series – not just mine – and that it makes logical sense for them to wait until they’ve decided on all of them.
“They love the show,” he told me. “Stop driving yourself crazy with catastrophic thoughts.”
I had to admit he was right. Despite the weeks of silence, the network really did seem enthusiastic about the project. “Of course,” he added, “they may like the show but be iffy about you.”
“What?” I asked, feeling myself get tense all over again. “Well,” he said, “sometimes when a network takes this long to announce a decision, it’s because they’re trying to line up someone else to run the show.”
I had to admit that this was one angle I hadn’t examined. In all of my catastrophic scenario spinning, it hadn’t occurred to me that the network may be strategising how best to get the show, but lose me.
The best way to find out, aside from waiting around for the news to make its way to me, is to call my agent and demand he investigate.
Which I won’t do. I’d rather sit alone and knit myself into knots of worry and catastrophic thinking. If it’s bad news I’m going to hear, I’d rather hear it from myself.
Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
