Last year, I got a call from a friend of mine who is a producer. Amazingly, she wanted to try to make a TV show based on my work and home life. Over the years, Hollywood has optioned some of my books and magazine stories, but nothing ever got produced. Instead, things got weird. In 2007, I wrote a memoir about a year I spent following the rules of the Bible. Producers cast Marlon Wayans to play me.
But maybe this time will be different.
My friend, a talented TV producer, thinks we can sell a sitcom about a writer at a men's magazine who does wacky social experiments. One week, he'll tell the unvarnished truth all the time (as I did once for a story in this magazine, "I Think You're Fat," July 2007). Another week, he'll outsource all his daily tasks to India ("My Outsourced Life," September 2005). His wife will be exasperated, but will forgive him every twenty-two minutes. Things look good. Jack Black signs on as a producer. Two successful writers who worked on The King of Queens join the team. The writers — a married couple named Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa — fly to New York to interview me and my wife, Julie. They are happy my life already comes with built-in sitcom touches: My wife arranges my sweaters in my closet with labels like FOR INDOOR WEAR, FOR OUTDOOR WEAR, ASK PERMISSION BEFORE WEARING. Cathy types this into her BlackBerry. They ask about our biggest fights, our in-laws, and our sleeping arrangements.
I sign a contract that says the producers can have their way with my character. My wife and our perhaps-too-trusting babysitter do the same.
I am elated but frightened. The producers and writers pitch the idea to the networks. It's called My Life As an Experiment. NBC bites. My friends are excited. I'm excited. This could be huge.
The studio (Sony) will pay Josh and Cathy to write a script. But it is just the first step. Every pilot season, the networks are pitched thousands of ideas. They pay for the rights to about four hundred scripts. Seventy of those scripts are filmed as pilots. Twenty of those pilots make it to air. Seven will make it to the second year. I'll be lucky to be the new Encore! Encore! (Nathan Lane comedy, 1998 — twelve episodes). I'll even settle for being the new Emily's Reasons Why Not (Heather Graham comedy, 2006 — one episode).
Still, Josh and Cathy call to congratulate: "You are one step closer to national humiliation!"
THE SCRIPT
Josh and Cathy write an outline. My character is named A. J. Wilder. (I'm a wilder version of myself, perhaps?) They change my wife's name from Julie to Stacie for legal reasons. She's pissed. They turn my three boys into a boy and a girl. My kids are pissed. As for me, well, my character has a National Press Club award on his wall. Fiction has its advantages.
The pilot's story line comes from an article I wrote two years ago for this magazine ("Do I Love My Wife? An Investigative Report," June 2009). I went into an fMRI machine and two scientists recorded images of my brain as I studied photos of my wife and, for comparison, Angelina Jolie.
The idea was to see whether I loved my wife, in scientific terms.
In the show, A. J.'s brain spikes equally for Angelina and his wife. This infuriates Stacie and launches her on a quest to sex up their marriage. Lingerie is worn, breasts are flashed.
The show's A. J., like me, works at a men's magazine, which they're calling Rest & Relaxation. (All the better names were trademarked, they say.) This is how the writers describe my boss: "Dan is, according to himself and others, the manliest man in America. He wears power suits, and he was drinking whisky in the office long before Mad Men made alcoholism cool again... Dan's a single, one-night-stand kind of guy who happily admits that he'll never have a normal relationship because he's pretty broken inside. He also buys expensive man toys to fill the void."
Uh-oh. First of all, that doesn't sound like my boss, David Granger. My boss is indeed manly and does drink alcohol. But I don't think he's broken inside and needs to fill the void with expensive toys. And even if he were, I don't think he'd enjoy that image being portrayed on national TV. The producers explain that it's not based on Granger. It's just any old editor in chief of a men's magazine where a guy named A. J. works as a writer. Not to worry. Still, I am surprisingly happy with the script. It's got some funny lines, moves quickly, and tries to capture the tone of my marriage. Luckily, NBC likes it, too. Another step.
THE ACTORS
Casting is a bitch. It's like the debt-ceiling negotiations, but with attractive people. Everyone has to agree on the right guy: the network, the producers, the writers, and the studio. Meanwhile, dozens of other TV pilots are trolling the same small pond of actors. My wife is worried they're going to cast a schlubby, pudgy guy to play me. The producers tell her not to fret. This is NBC. NBC does not cast schlubby leads. That's CBS.
My producer friend, Carolyn Bernstein, sends me the list of actors who are reading to play A. J. It is an absurd number of people: 150 actors. At one point, David Arquette is going to play me, but he is right in the midst of his post — Courteney Cox breakdown, so that falls through. Kal Penn considers but backs out at the last minute. Scott Foley, T. R. Knight, Tom Everett Scott — all these pretty famous (for TV) guys audition. They get ten minutes to read a scene — from a cold start, in an office, facing the producers. What a horrible job. I make a note to quash my son's after-kindergarten drama class. One week goes by, two, three. They still haven't agreed on an actor for A. J. We're supposed to start shooting in a week. I call Carolyn and ask her what the odds are it's going to fall through.
She pauses. "I'm worried," she says.
I tell Julie to cancel our plans to visit California. A couple of days later, a breakthrough. The producers and the studio have made a choice: a little-known comic named Jon Dore. He's handsome, quirky, bearded, and Canadian. The network seems less thrilled. But it says it'll approve Dore if we land a big name to play my father-in-law, an overconfident heart surgeon. (In real life, he's an overconfident software executive.) How about John Lithgow?
He passes. Then good news: Donald Sutherland agrees to do it. Donald Sutherland! I've loved Donald Sutherland ever since his weed-enabled epistemological insights in Animal House. ("So you're saying our universe could be an atom in the pinkie of a giant?") Now the producers can choose my wife. I tell them I want Minka Kelly.
They tell me to stop being a pervert. They cast an age-appropriate actress named Paget Brewster, who is just finishing a stint on CBS's Criminal Minds.
They also pick the guy who will play my boss: Adam Campbell. He is blond and British. Uh-oh again.
THE FILMING
My wife and I fly out to Los Angeles for the final three days of the weeklong shoot. We arrive at the Burbank set and walk into our fictional Brooklyn townhouse. It is insane. The network and studio are spending about $3 million to make this pilot. They have a cast and crew of two hundred people; it's possible the resulting minimovie will be seen by no more than fifty. It's like building a huge cruise ship in the desert. Or a subway in L. A.
The townhouse has a kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom, dining room. It has books, games, a vintage typewriter, and drapes that Julie doesn't like. The attention to detail is admirable, if a bit lunatic. Carolyn tells me they figured A. J. could afford new kitchen appliances after his second book (hence the Viking fridge) but didn't have enough to replace the cabinets.
Jon and Paget posed for family photos that hang in the hallway — photos that aren't even onscreen. The prop guy re-creates my computer, complete with the cluttered desktop, my screen saver, and my embarrassing cherry-red protective cover.
The show is shot movie-style with a single camera (rather than with three cameras and a live audience), because that's considered cooler these days. That means they shoot several takes. Even more than usual because they haven't gotten permission from Angelina Jolie to use her photo as an object of lust. The always-game Beyoncé, however, has agreed. They shoot it both ways.
THE DONALD
The next day's shoot is in a banquet room at the Sheraton Universal Hotel. Donald Sutherland's character is receiving an award for heart surgeon of the year. Everyone is a bit scared of Sutherland and his big white beard. A gossip item has just come out that says he and Julie Christie actually had intercourse while filming a sex scene in some 1970s movie — a story he denies. So we are even more on edge.
With good reason. Donald Sutherland is a great actor, but not an easygoing guy. He has rules: no photos. No smoking near him. He requires a certain brand of Swiss underwear be supplied to him on the set. I was aware they excelled at chocolate, but underwear is new to me.
Maybe he's just staying in character. As the condescending heart surgeon, he has lines like "A. J., I'm always amazed at how much free time you seem to have for a grown man."
Sutherland decides his surgeon character should be obsessed with his hands. Hand sculptures are brought in to decorate his office. He shoots his scenes while filing his nails. If the series makes it on the air, maybe this'll become a cultural touchstone. Cool guys will be giving themselves manicures at the office. "Yeah, like Donald Sutherland in My Life."
Jack Black — who's too nice to inspire fear — visits the set several times in, as he says, a "producorial capacity." At one point, he tells Sutherland, "I have a good feeling about this."
Sutherland responds, "Don't say that." He explains, the only other time he's heard a similar phrase was when Al Pacino said it to him on the set of Revolution.
And who can forget that 1985 historical drama?
THE NEW YORK STREET
The final day's shoot was on "New York Street" on the Paramount backlot. The scene has A. J. and Stacie driving to a movie date in their Mini Cooper. Six odor-free cabs and a New York — style bus circle the block. A dry-ice truck pumps steam through the city grates. Pigeons flutter around the buildings. A red fire hydrant, according to Dore, has been sprayed with actual New York dog urine.
The producers show me some dailies. Granger has now gone from being an alcoholic to being a drug addict. In the script, he offers A. J. gin, vodka, tequila, Cointreau, and crème de banana. In the show, they've changed it to marijuana, blue devils, red slammers, LSD, and South American toad venom.
Dear Lord.
I'm also worried about another character — the hot nanny, played by a Latina comedian named Anjelah Johnson. In one scene, the nanny is unimpressed by my wife Stacie's outfit. Stacie complains to A. J.: "I should be judging her for coming into my house in six-inch heels and 'hey-check-out-my-vagina' pants."
A. J. responds: "You don't need to wear tight clothes. Your intelligence is your vagina pants."
I like the line. But if this thing airs, our nanny — who is shy, reserved, and Catholic, and who wears loose-fitting pants — will be mortified. We'll be interviewing new babysitters the day after the premiere.
I'm finding that the sitcom is having an odd effect on my marriage. My wife and I are turning into sitcom characters. We bicker and banter more. We argue about socks on the floor and map directions. Julie has started talking like Stacie, at first ironically, now not so much. "What's the dealio?"
On this final day of shooting, we actually are sitcom characters. Or at least extras. We are playing Brooklynites sitting on a bench outside a coffee shop while the fictional A. J. talks on the phone inside. (They built the Gorilla Coffee shop, complete with Gorilla mugs and Gorilla takeout cups.)
Julie is doing sudoku (though she always does crossword puzzles in real life, so some serious acting). I'm reading a newspaper. I tell people to get out of my sight line, because that's what Sutherland said the night before.
They can't use a real newspaper without getting permission, so I'm holding a prop newspaper with fake articles. The assistant director tells me not to read the paper until we do the take, so I can look interested when the camera is rolling. He is screwing with me. When I finally read the articles, they all consist of the exact same words: "The government must undertake this project to accomplish the goal stated by the various parties." We meet the other extras. With the pandemic of reality shows, extra work is scarce. One woman hasn't worked since she played a whore on Deadwood. Another extra tells me he quit his job as an energy trader in Texas to come to Hollywood. His job now is to drive a car in circles.
THE WAIT
The studio tests the sitcom before an audience. It tests well! Maybe this will actually happen. What if it goes to syndication and I make millions? I start to imagine my life as a famous TV-show icon. I'm already coming up with quips to tell Billy Bush on the red carpet.
The studio submits the pilot to the network. Silence. More silence. A few days later, the NBC president calls the studio to give some "notes." They're mostly about the music. The music? Is that good? More silence.
A couple of Web sites write that the show has "buzz." But they have no idea what they're talking about. My self-Googling reveals that there's already a My Life As an Experiment fan blog with updates on casting and the introduction of the acronym MLAAE. "With a slew of characters like this, I can't wait for this show to air!" writes one contributor. Maybe the blog is guerrilla marketing.
Or maybe TV fans are more psychotic than I imagined.
I'm sent a version of the rough cut, which my wife and I watch, holding hands nervously. When it ends, Julie turns to me, wide-eyed. "It's pretty good! I mean, it's not groundbreaking, but ..."
We show it to my mom and dad. I avoid looking at them, especially when Paget Brewster squirts massage lotion on her hand and Jon Dore starts unbuttoning his pants. My parents love it. Though they would love any show about me in which my character didn't engage in frottage on children or animals.
I show it to Granger. He sits stone-faced for twenty-two minutes while I squirm in my chair.
"I didn't have control over the editor character," I say as it ends.
"I actually thought he was the best character," Granger says. As for the rest of the pilot? Granger isn't impressed.
I'm starting to worry NBC isn't either. The upfronts — the New York City event when the networks unveil their schedules — are in two days. No word.
Finally, my friend Carolyn calls. I can tell within the first syllable: We are dead. Most people loved Jon Dore — except the one guy who mattered, the programming head of NBC. I have to send an e-mail to friends and family about the pilot's failure. I write that it was likely the victim of anti-Canadianism. (Both Dore and Sutherland are Canucks.) Maybe if they'd cast a Wayans?
THE END
NBC, I'm told, decided to go with women-centric comedies this year, most with big TV names attached, like Christina Applegate and Chelsea Handler.
Friends greet me with the funereal I'm-sorry-for-your-loss face. And I am depressed for a week. But only a week. The whole notion of a TV show about my life seems too surreal, as award winners say.
A wise producer once told me that to retain sanity in Hollywood, you have to love the process. You can't worry about the end product, because the chances of an end product even existing are nearly as wispy slim as your average actress.
And I did love the process. I got to meet Jack Black and got to learn about Donald Sutherland's underwear of choice. I stole a fake BlackBerry and a fake clementine from the set. And I have the most expensive home movie in history, starring people with better skin as ourselves.
