May, 2002

Every year, near the end of May, there was a mass migration of television luminaries from Hollywood to New York City for The Upfronts, a series of dog-and-pony shows in which the broadcast networks unveiled their fall schedules to advertisers, the multi-billion dollar trough from which they hoped to feed.

This year, Tom and I were part of that migration. Why? Because King Of The Jungle had been picked up for the fall schedule. We had a guaranteed thirteen episodes on air in a coveted time slot. It was, astoundingly, everything we had imagined when we made the impulsive decision to traverse the continent and plant our flag on Mt. Sitcom.

We were flying First Class on an American Airlines wide-body jet courtesy of our studio. Until that day, neither of us had ever been in First Class. Well, technically we had been in it — lugging our carry-ons down the aisle as the elite passengers glanced up from their complimentary copies of The Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily and silently judged us while we were herded into coach where we belonged — but now we had First Class seats.

And they were incredible! Wide, plush leather that reclined. Not just a few barely perceptible degrees, like in the Economy cabin, but aaaaaaaall the way back. I'm talking fully horizontal. A motherfuckin' bed in the motherfuckin' sky!

And holy shit, people! The service! Before we even took off, the flight attendants — who, I have to say, were so much prettier and perkier than those scowling lumps of misshapen flesh who shambled through coach — handed each of us a glass. A glass made of actual glass and filled with champagne, which we blissfully sipped while we perused a laminated menu of mouthwatering dishes designed by a celebrity chef. And do you know what these flight attendants — these shapely saints of the stratosphere — did when we finished our champagne? They hurried over, smiling beatifically, with more champagne!

Of course, Tom and I didn't spend the whole flight just drinking champagne. Somewhere around lunch we switched to wine, which they obligingly served us in large tumblers. Which reminds me of another great thing about First Class: The bathroom-to-passenger ratio was mercifully high. For someone like me, who had a bladder the size of an eye-dropper, that was worth the price of admission right there. Especially since someone else paid it.

"You know," I observed, while we were eating hand-made ice cream sundaes, "if the people in the back of the plane decided to rise up and murder us, I wouldn't blame them one bit."

"Oh, we'd totally deserve it," Tom agreed. "Off with our heads!" He then signaled to the flight attendant for a glass of port, because that was classy and he was in First Class.

Soon, tired from the excitement and the alcohol, Tom decided to get some sleep, using the sleep mask the airline had thoughtfully provided. I was tired, too, but I was determined to stay awake for the whole flight. Because for all I knew this would be the only time I'd get to do this, and I was going to savor every second.

I leaned back, laced my fingers behind my head, and marveled that we managed to drag this thing over the finish line.

———————————

Post-Production consisted mostly of staring at the back of peoples' heads in dark rooms. The bulk of our time was spent in the edit bay where Tom and I sat on a leather couch behind our editor, Fred, who was silhouetted against the light of multiple monitors and LED's, his nimble fingers flying over the Avid like he was weaving a tapestry on a loom.

Fred was an old school editor: Introverted to the point of misanthropy, communicating mostly in monosyllables and sighs, his shoulders rising and falling in exasperation whenever we had a dumb idea which, apparently, was a lot. He was also — as we discovered the one and only time he swiveled around in his Aeron chair to face us — cross-eyed, which for a guy who spent endless hours staring at screens in the dark, seemed absolutely perfect.

Editing is extremely technical and precise and for people with obsessive tendencies, it can pose a threat to their mental health. It is all too easy to spiral into madness, agonizing over each 1/30th of a second and losing sight of the narrative. It is a condition known in the business as "frame fucking." I did not suffer from it, but Tom sure did and I would become impatient as he kept going back and forth between cutting one frame... or two.

Nobody cares!

I care!

Oh. My mistake. Nobody cares but you!

I care, too.

Stay out of this, back of Fred's head!

In fairness, Tom's precise eye was extremely useful when it came to, for instance, maintaining continuity when crossing takes, something I was extraordinarily bad at.

We can't use that shot.

Why, Tom? Because there's a speck of dust that only you can see?

No, because there's a crew guy in it!

Oh. Ha-ha! Whoops!

We got editing notes from the network, of course, but at least there were parameters now. The footage we had was the footage we had. No matter how ardently they wished for, or how vividly they imagined the existence of a nonexistent shot we could not give it to them. That's just physics.

And let me tell you, network executives are no fans of physics. For instance, we consistently got this kind of note: "The cut is too long, so you have to shorten it. Also, we'd like you to add back the D scene."

Make it shorter while making it longer. Gotcha!

The most contentious notes, however, in Post were about music. This was true for three reasons: Everybody had a strong opinion about music, it was extremely subjective, and it could be changed until the very last minute.

We had a terrific composer — a super-talented guy named Elliot who we hired on the spot when we he told us that he used to be in Weird Al's band — and honestly I have no idea how he stayed so calm. The network would give us their notes, and we'd relay them to Elliot along with our own notes, and he'd somehow sort out all of the contradictory and incomprehensible directives. We were, we realized, doing the exact same thing to Elliot that the network executives were doing to us. Only it was harder for Elliot because we lacked a musical vocabulary, so we'd say stuff like:

It needs to be kinda like, I don't know, The Cars, but more grrrrr!"

He'd stare.

OK, you know that Alice Cooper song? Like that but maybe more upbeat and a hint of reggae?

He'd stare.

It's like the end of Rocky but not so orchestral and more whimsical. A slide whistle, maybe?

He'd stare.

Somehow, he turned that into something great. We began to think of him, a tad self-servingly, I admit, as the musical version of us.

The last step was sound mixing. It was like editing, but with a lot more computers and screens and backs of heads. (We never saw their faces, but I'd like to think they were crosseyed as well. Or Cyclopes would have been fun, too.) And, believe it or not, even more technical.

There was also candy. Starbursts. Yum!

Most of the sounds in a TV show are created in Post-Production. Footsteps, walla (background atmospheric dialogue) , chirping birds, car alarms, beer being poured into a glass, rustling leaves, you name it. There is a guy whose sole purpose is to add laughs to your show, where needed, or modify a laugh if it's too short or too long, or too hot, or got clipped when we switched takes.

And here's where this, too, can descend into madness. Because every sound is adjustable. Let's say there's a barking dog. We can make it louder. Or lower. It can be on screen right or screen left. It can be a growl instead of a bark. It could be a different kind of dog. Or, hell, maybe it should be a cat.

It took hours to get the balance right. (Here, too, Tom's OCD really came in handy.) But there was a little joke at the end of it, because sure it sounded great on the speakers in sound editing... but virtually everyone in America was be listening through completely different speakers. Which meant that everybody would hear something different — sometimes startlingly different — than what we intended. And if that's not a metaphor for life, I don't know what is.

But that was it. It was finally over. The copies would be delivered to the network. And all we could do was wait.

———————————

Now, at a cruising altitude of forty thousand feet, every bit of hardship seemed completely worth it. And just as I thought that the flight had gotten as awesome as it could possibly get, this happened: I looked across the aisle and noticed a businessman in his late 30's. He had paperwork spread out haphazardly on his tray table. I noticed a spiral-bound book that looked strangely familiar and I eventually realized why. It was a pitch book for a corporate merger worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I had seen lots of them during my time temping for the douche bags at Cambridge Capital.

"Excuse me," I said. He looked up blearily from his papers and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. "Are you an investment banker?"

"I am," he said. "You too?"

I'm not sure why he thought that. He was an in Armani suit and wearing a red power tie, while I was in jeans and a chocolate syrup-stained T-shirt.

"Nope," I said, hoping he would out of common courtesy feel compelled to ask me what I did.

"And what do you do?" he asked. Welcome to my web said the spider to the fly.

"Me?" I said nonchalantly. "I just created a TV show."

"Really?" He was impressed and, I'd like to think, envious as well.

"Yup. It's called King of The Jungle. Picked up for thirteen on the air starting this fall.

"That," he said, "is seriously cool."

You're god damn right it is.

———————————

Our network's upfront was held in a historic art deco theater somewhere in the city. Near the Chrysler Building. Or Soho. Maybe Central Park. I don't really know anything about NYC geography. But it was a very nice theater.

Libby saw us as we entered the lobby. "Yo yo! What up, homeboys?" She pulled us into a three-way hug."Man!" she said admiringly. "You guys were unreal! No matter how hard we hit you, you motherfuckers just wouldn't stay down!"

"Um... thanks?" Tom said.

Libby laughed. "This is your first upfronts, right?" We admitted that it was. "Well, it's gonna be quite an eye opener." We both cocked our heads in confused unison. "You guys are so funny. It's here that you learn what you really do for a living."

"And what is that?"

"Fill time between commercials."

We were still confused as she left us to greet someone else in her borderline offensive "street" dialect, but it wasn't long before we understood.

We were directed to our seats near the back of the balcony. Not great for viewing the stage, but it was close to an exit which would have been useful if the place had caught fire. Which, after twenty minutes or so, we were hoping that it would. It was so fucking dull.

The emcee was a late night talk show host whose existence I was only vaguely aware of. His jokes mostly revolved around how terrible the network's ratings had been the previous year. We Suck! struck me as a somewhat odd sales pitch, but I was no expert at marketing, although virtually everyone else in the building was and I suspected they were as nonplussed as me. Irony wasn't as much of a thing then as it is now.

Then there was an extremely long and spectacularly dull Power Point presentation by the head of the sports division, followed by an even longer and somehow duller one by the network president who walked the Madison Avenue folks through the primetime schedule. Both presentations were heavy on numbers, buzzwords, jargon and — especially — dollar signs.

And this was when we fully grasped what Libby was getting at. It wasn't disillusioning per se — we knew full well we were cogs in a mammoth multinational conglomerate — but I was unsettled by the reductiveness. All that creativity expressed in monetary terms. It was like standing too close to a Seurat painting. You saw the dots, but not the river. Or if you'd like a more contemporary analogy, it was the difference between seeing the computer code, and living in the The Matrix. It was a strange feeling, one that never entirely left us.

———————————

The network provided busses to transport us to the after-party in Coney Island or The Lincoln Tunnel or Time Square or something. Generally speaking, I avoided going to parties (and by avoided I mean wasn't invited). Whenever I did get roped into one, I generally spent my time talking to Samantha. She wasn't a fan of parties, either, and most of our conversations revolved around the topic of how to best make an unobtrusive exit.

But I had never been to an after-party before and I have to admit that, for no discernible reason, it sounded awesome. So much better, I assumed, than the during-parties I was used to. But it wasn't.

It was held in a large, nondescript rectangular space with show posters placed around the room on easels at regular intervals. Lights, music, alcohol and passed hors d'oeuvres. Given the financial stakes of the Upfronts, I was frankly surprised how underwhelming it all was.

It was also pretty sleazy. There was a kind of Las Vegas trade show vibe, where everyone was drunk and horny and the normal rules of engagement (and marriage) didn't apply.

It was here, while we were drinking martinis — no, excuse me, Tom was drinking martinis, I was drinking apple martinis which, Tom kept reminding me, didn't even qualify as martinis — that Tom and I witnessed the most amazing pickup line we'd ever heard.

"So. Who's fucking you these days?"

This was said by what I assumed, based on his relative youth and inexpensive suit, was a junior talent agent. He had slicked-back hair and a predatory grin that reminded me of Christian Bale's role in American Psycho.

He was hitting on an attractive young woman, probably also a junior talent agent. She was wearing a business suit, a black jacket over white silk blouse opened two buttons past demure. Her skirt was very tight.

"Not you,"she said with mean girl disgust.

"Well, I'll be here when you change your mind."

She walked away, shaking her head at his boorishness. American Psycho noticed us staring and gave us a can't win 'em all shrug and went off in search of drunker prey.

Tom and I were simultaneously horrified and delighted by the exchange and we would go back to it many times over the years when writing "meet cute" scenes, making each other laugh until we deleted it and wrote the real, far less funny (but broadcastable) scene.

A little while later, I decided to call it a night. On the way back to my hotel in midtown or Wall Street or Yankee Stadium or something, I concluded that after-parties did not live up to their hype. Although what I didn't realize at the time was that there was a party after the after-party, this one for the VIP's. Apparently, as first-time show creators, we didn't rate. Which was too bad, because I bet the after-after-party was awesome.

All of this led to what was, undoubtedly, the most show-bizzy moment I would ever have. Check it out:

Back of a stretch limousine.

Being chauffeured to Newark airport.

Talking on my cell phone.

Negotiating a deal.

With an agent from William Morris.

Honestly, the only way it could have been more stereotypically Hollywood would have been to use the phrase let's do lunch while becoming a Scientologist.

Now that our show was officially announced we needed to hire a writing staff. And so, of course, did every other scripted show on TV. Cue the feeding frenzy.

I was on my own for this. Tom had decided to spend a few more days in the city, visiting friends and relatives, but it wasn't a problem. We had already done our due diligence — poring through countless (and mostly terrible) spec. scripts, meeting with writers and putting together a prioritized list of our preferences — and we scrambled to snap them up before anyone else did, all while staying within our budget.

The budget thing was a real drag. First off, it involved math. And for me, at least, one of the reasons you become a writer is that you don't have to do math anymore. But it also really drove home the fact that Tom and I were management now. For our entire career we fought for every dollar we could get, but it was now our job to pay writers as little as we could get away with. We had become The Man. Or, I guess, The Person.

And it wasn't just about cost, it was also about bang-for-the-buck. Do we try to hire an experienced upper-level writer, even though he's very expensive? Or do we go with two mid-level writers for the exact same money and get more bodies in The Room? Do we hire a bunch of staff writers to save money on scripts? We'd have a fairly green staff, but the money we saved could be use to hire better directors.

I found the whole thing exhilarating as, one by one, the pieces clicked into place. I even played a little hardball, something I never did in real life. Many a time, I saw a shop owner in Cabo San Lucas or Puerto Vallarta struggle to conceal his delight and amazement when I agreed to the first price he offered. Señorita Krenetsky may have been a third rate Spanish teacher, but even I knew what gringo estúpido meant.

On this particular call the William Morris agent claimed that her client had gotten a better offer on another show and would we be willing to match it? No, we wouldn't. They paid more per episode, but we had a thirteen episode order and the competing show only had six. I told her to do the math, because I sure didn't want to. "Oh, and we need to know sooner than later." The agent got off the phone to consult with her client.

I snapped my cell phone shut.

The chauffeur — Dean from Patterson, New Jersey who originally worked in tech but had to become a driver after the dot-com crash — asked what I was doing and I told him that I had just gotten a show picked up to series. I told him the basic premise, name-dropped the stars.

"It doesn't sound like my kind of thing," Dean said candidly.

"It's not for everybody," I replied amicably, twisting the top off of a complimentary twelve-ounce bottled water.

"You know what's a good show? The Sopranos."

"That's what I hear," I said, taking a sip. Was it my imagination or did limo water taste better than regular water?

My cell rang. It was the William Morris agent and she said that her client had decided to accept our offer. I said I'd call her client later to welcome him aboard.

"Hey, can I ask you a question?" Dean asked, and before I could say yes, he asked me his question. "Are you worried that you'll get bad reviews?"

Believe it or not, that thought had never even occurred to me. The truth was that we had spent so much time and energy trying to get the show picked up that we never even stopped to consider if people would actually like it.

"Well," I replied, with an uneasy chuckle. "I am now." I took another sip of my limo water, but now it just tasted like regular water.