February, 2008

Working in children's television was a lot like contracting herpes. You were aware that herpes existed, you knew that people got herpes all the time, but you never imagined that you would be one of those people.

(And later on, you discovered that a lot more people had herpes than you realized.)

During the strike, Tom and I sometimes picketed with a daytime animation writer named Gia, a delightfully caustic lesbian in her early thirties who, we were told, looked a lot like Justin Bieber. (We didn't actually know what Justin Bieber looked like, nor did we know that lesbians looking like Justin Bieber was a phenomenon in lesbian culture.)

"Did you always want to write for children's TV?" I stupidly asked one day. Gia pushed her mirrored sunglasses up onto her forehead so I could clearly see the disdain in her Bieber-ish eyes.

"Nobody," she said acerbically, "fucking wants to fucking write for fucking children's TV." She held my gaze for a few moments more to let her words truly sink in, then glowered at Tom, then slid her shades back down.

"I guess that's a no?" Tom deadpanned and Gia laughed. She had a very loud laugh. She had a very loud everything. We really liked her.

Anyway, Gia had originally hoped to work in primetime, but she needed to make a living, so she took the job she could get, rather than hold out for the one she wanted. She had, unwittingly, taken her first step into the children's television quicksand. Because every year she spent writing for kids made it increasingly difficult to escape. I mean, good luck getting a gig on How I Met Your Mother or Sex & The City or even a primetime animated show like Family Guy or The Simpsons when all of your credits were from shows like Yo Gabba Gabba, Dora The Explorer and Blue's Clues.

We had no idea, during that conversation, that by the summer of 2010, we'd be up to our necks in the herpetic quicksand of children's television, with the world's loudest lesbian by our side.

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The journey was rather meandering.

A month after Tom and I lost our Disney deal, The Writers Strike finally, wearily, ended. (Did we win? Even with the benefit of hindsight I can't really say. All I know for sure is that the studios sure as hell didn't lose.) And what was surprising was that, for us, the worst day of the strike wasn't when we got the news of our termination, but the Monday after it was all over and everyone went back to work. Everyone, it seemed, but us.

It reminds me of the parents of fallen sons in World War Two. First, the tragedy of that grim notification from the War Department and then another tragedy as they watched everyone else gratefully hugging their boys, while their own child was still and forever, silently, irretrievably gone.

Which, now that I think about it, is a wildly offensive analogy. I mean, comparing an American soldier making the ultimate sacrifice fighting to rid the world of totalitarianism... to a comedy writer whining about losing a cushy gig while he picks up his private school-educated kids in his Lexus? Quite frankly, it's that kind of vainglorious psychobabble from entitled jerks like me that makes folks in the flyover states hate us show biz types to begin with. And using the term flyover states probably doesn't help matters, either.

Honestly, people. I don't know why you put up with me.

Anyway, with so much uncertainty — in our career specifically, but also in the entertainment landscape generally; the explosion of content from Netflix and Amazon and Hulu (and pretty much anyone else with a few hundred million dollars to burn) was just around the corner — Tom and I decided to cast as wide a net as possible. We took any meeting we could and we booked any job we were offered, in an as many areas as possible. We were simultaneously charging down numerous disparate paths to see which of them ultimately panned out as a viable career.

This led to an astonishing afternoon where Tom and I turned in steps on five different projects on the same day — an original network pilot for CBS (Everyone's Stupid But Me), an original cable pilot for HBO (Parole Violations), an original animated pilot for children's TV (Suit & Tie), a rewrite of a live-action film (Downsized) and a rewrite of an animated film (Modern Art) — while we were directing our own original horror/comedy web series (Overkill: A Love Story) for a web production company called Sound Speed, which we shot mostly in my back yard.

Tellingly, the one we liked the most was the web comedy for which we were paid somewhere in the vicinity of nothing. (Less than nothing if you count our out-of-pocket expenses.) But as writers and directors we had total creative control. Plus, we got to throw fake blood and real viscera on our lead actors, which was tremendously cathartic. Honestly, if given the choice, I'd do that every day.

Also tellingly, of all our myriad projects, the one we paid the least attention to — at least initially — was Suit & Tie. DuckGoose asked if we'd be willing to come in for a Meet and Greet, something which we wouldn't have even bothered with pre-strike, but now with our irons in the fire philosophy, we figured it couldn't hurt. A sentiment that was vehemently contradicted by Gia, when we ran into her in the hallway of the DuckGoose offices.

"What the fuck are you two doing here?" she bellowed. It was her version of a greeting. "Run, you idiots! Run while you still can!" And then she lowered her voice and added, "But if you do get something going, I'd love to work with you."

"You'll be the first one we hire," Tom assured her.

"I'm fucking holding you to that." She did the two-fingered I've got my eyes on you gesture and dramatically stomped off in her combat boots. (And I'm sorry, I know it's a stereotype, but she was actually wearing combat boots. Sue me.)

The conference room of DuckGoose was an odd juxtaposition of imposing furniture — high-backed gray office chairs surrounding a dark granite conference table — and whimsical hand-drawn cartoons thumbtacked to the cork board walls. They were trying to send two messages at once: We're a fun place! and We're a serious, multi-billion dollar entertainment company! and the result looked like a kindergarten classroom on the Death Star.

The meeting started like every other meeting we had back then: With a ten-minute, in-depth discussion about Tom's hair. Over the previous couple of years, Tom had let it grow long, down to his shoulders. While I thought it looked ridiculous, it didn't set off any particular alarm bells for me. I knew plenty of guys with long hair and I chalked up Tom's trichological folly to a mid-life crisis. He was finally divorced from The Destroyer — praise Jesus! — and this seemed entirely consistent with the profile of a middle-aged man preparing to engage the opposite sex. Which, now that I think about it, he was.

But it was annoying that Tom's hair was always a topic of conversation. Comments about sheen and color and highlights, comparative analyses of various hair care products. Shampoos and conditioners and hair dryers and styling mousse and gels and detanglers and whatever the hell else they were babbling about. (I was slowly balding, so I saw no reason to keep up with the latest hair care trends.)

"I sure hope," I would say whenever I reached a saturation point, "that this conversation goes on forever." Then everybody would laugh and we'd have the actual meeting.

A Meet-and-Greet was basically the corporate version of a first date. And like a first date, everyone dressed up (which for Tom meant jeans and a colorful silk shirt and for me meant jeans and a T-shirt or, if it was a particularly important meeting, a clean T-shirt). Everyone was on their best behavior, their latent insanity masked by solicitous getting-to-know-you questions and earnest listening. A lot of eye contact. A lot of nodding.

And also like a first date, there was an implicit power imbalance based on attractiveness, and in this case we were way more attractive than our DuckGoose counterparts. With their silly little cartoons and dopey milquetoast tween pop stars they appeared to us like Joan Cusack in 16 Candles (Google it). But with our reputation for writing drop-dead-funny scripts combined with our primetime and feature film cred we appeared to them like Hugh Fucking Jackman. So Tom and I just sat back and relaxed while they plied us with compliments, laughed at our jokes and tried everything they could think of to get into our pants.

"So what can we do," one of the senior executives finally asked, "to get you to do something for us?" This was a question that we got asked surprisingly often, given the obviousness of the answer.

Tom and I looked at each other. "Um.... Give us money?" Tom suggested.

"Money might work," I agreed. We turned back to the DuckGoose execs.

"We're thinking money is the way to go," Tom declared.

"Although maybe heartfelt appreciation...?"

"No! Not as good as money!"

"Yeah, you're right. What was I thinking?"

And that's when they told us about this new project about a giraffe and octopus in the Serengeti and asked if we were interested in writing a pilot and, if it went to series, running the show. We weren't. But we figured we'd give it a whirl. Irons in the fire and all that.

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One thing about working in animation: It was really slow. A single episode of a show done in traditional 2D animation (think the classic Disney films or The Flintsones) took eight months to complete. Using 3D CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) it took fifteen months from premise to final product. And animated feature films? Four years. Five years. Animation was no place for the impatient.

But it wasn't just the creative side, everything they did was painfully slow. For instance, they were dying to be in business with us, but it took them six months to make the deal with our agent. It took so long that, by the time the deal was closed, Tom and I had completely forgotten about it.

"Hey, guys! The deal closed."

"What deal?"

"The DuckGoose thing."

"The what?"

"The animated pilot? Remember?"

"Sorta..."

Tom and I had assumed that writing an animated pilot for kids would be really easy and man were we right! It was, first of all, just fifteen pages, a third of the pilot length we had become accustomed to in grown-up TV. And since we truly did not care if this show went forward, we just wrote stuff to amuse each other and we didn't even try to make sense. We handed in the script, they gave us some notes, we ignored most of them and handed it in again.

Months went by.

"Good news! They want you to produce the pilot!"

"Which pilot?"

"The animated one. Short and Stuffy or whatever."

"Uch. OK. Fine."

Producing the pilot was easy, too. With the script already written, most of the heavy lifting was done by the artist and the director. Tom and I were mostly involved in casting the voice actors. Voice acting, incidentally is a fantastic gig. Good money, short hours, no makeup, no wardrobe, no blocking. You don't even have to learn your lines, you can just read them from the script.

For that reason, pretty much every actor in the world wants to get into voice acting. It is, though, a lot harder than a lot of them think. Because a lot of actors act primarily with their faces and their bodies. So what seemed like a good audition while we were watching it would often go completely flat when we just listened to it.

On the other side of the spectrum are the journeyman (journeyperson?) voice actors who can do absolutely anything with their voices. These are people you've never seen, but have heard a million times. Maurice LaMarche, Tara Strong, Nolan North, Jennifer Hale, Kevin Michael Richardson, Tress MacNeille. They can switch seamlessly from one character to another and one accent to another, while somehow giving textured performances and making subtle adjustments at the behest of the voice director. Me? If I try to do an Indian accent, it will sound sort of Russian. And if I try to do a Russian accent it will come out sort of Australian. And if I try an Australian accent it won't sound like anything. I do not understand how they do what they do, but it's a joy to witness.

The highlight of the casting process was when Weird Al Yankovic came in to audition for the role of of Pod, the octopus. "This stuff is really funny," he said. Tom and I blushed and giggled like schoolgirls.

"You are one of our comedy inspirations," I told him.

He said — and I'll never forget this as long as I live — "Neato!"

(But we didn't hire him.)

We recorded the voices and then...

Months when by.

"I have news! DuckGoose just ordered your show to series!"

"Huh."

"What's the matter, boys? I thought you'd be happy."

"Yeah, no, it's fine. Whoo."

By the time we got this call, all of our other projects were done.

Both of the movies we worked on were green-lit based on our drafts, after which — as was now customary — we were replaced by other writers.

Overkill actually did pretty well on YouTube and, for some reason, fantastically well in Taiwan and the Czech Republic. We would have continued with the series, but Sound Speed went bankrupt, along with dozens of other internet production companies who couldn't figure out how to make money producing things for the internet.

Meanwhile, HBO very much enjoyed Parole Violations but were passing because it was too heightened. And just an hour before our agent's phone call, CBS told us they very much enjoyed Everybody's Stupid But Me but were passing because it wasn't heightened enough.

So Suit & Tie was not so much a labor of love — more a labor of I like you but I don't like you like you — it was simply the last project standing. But there was, I should point out, a big potential upside. When you create an animated show, you get a piece of the merchandising. And if the show hits — a long shot, but less long than a lot of other shots — that can be worth a lot. Just ask the creator of SpongeBob SquarePants if you happen to get invited to the jewel-encrusted palace on his private island.

I think if I have one overarching criticism of how Tom and I approached our career it was that we had a tendency to choose the path of least resistance. We didn't have to take this job, but everything else would require more effort with a less likely payoff. There was logic to it, but no guts.

I've complained a lot about executive interference and the insanity of Hollywood (and I will again, I assure you) but Tom and I have to take responsibility too. We were conscientious, we did good work, but sometimes we let our career happen to us.

And so a few months later we shuffled into our Suit & Tie office for the first time, almost in a fugue state. We didn't entirely understand how we let this happen, running a show we didn't particularly like, in a genre we didn't care about at all, being called Dumb fucks! by the first member of our nascent writing staff, but we knew that it would be more of a home than actual home five days a week.

And it would be here, in this strange place of bright colors and corporate I.D. badges, a place of candy jars and non-disclosure agreements, a place that somehow managed to be wacky and oppressive at the same time, that Tom would tell me his deepest secret. And that secret would, in turn, change everything.