Saturday, December 10, 2005
“In Development!”
Well, it’s official. After four months of meetings, pitches, emails, brainstorming sessions, hours of notes and “treatments,” I have a show “in development” at Showtime. Matt Solo (my agent at ICM) gave me the good news this past week. Adam and I had a mild teleconfence celebration, after which the enormity of the task ahead kinda hit us.
Our next step is to nail the pilot script. It’s got to be funny, pithy, and irreverent. It’s got to knock Bob Greenblat’s socks off. It’s got to be Emmy-worthy. I have complete faith in my co-creators, Adam and Jonathan, on this. As the TV newbie, I’m just happy to be involved, and am hoping that my specific expertise can help in some measurable way.
I know I’ve been a bit cagey about describing the show, so finally, here’s a broad lowdown:
It’s a half-hour single-camera comedy about how we, as a society, have gotten so obsessed with our “things,” that we’ve put them above all else. It’s about our desire and obsession with owning, using, and discarding. It’s about how and why we buy, how we’re manipulated into acquiring things we can’t afford, and how that affects our lives, our family, and our humanity.
We had a hard time selling it into the traditional networks because of the obvious implications for advertisers. But as I’ve said before in this blog, it doesn’t really matter what one opinion is, or a spoof says—marketing is a necessary evil, and as one of its prime modern progenitors, I’m happy that it exists, and don’t think society can survive without it. That said, what good is someone who can’t laugh at himself?
Anyway—onward.