For the last couple of years I’ve had a lot of people contact me about making Let’s Pretend This Never Happened into a movie or tv show and I’ve said no to all of them. Honestly, I only listened to the pitches because I thought it would be funny to write about, but then I got distracted and never actually wrote about it. It was very flattering though.
Don Cheadle’s production people touched base with me two years ago and I told them that I’d be interested, but only if Don Cheadle played me because I love that man and I think he has great range. They never called me back.
Then there was another big studio that called because they thought my book sounded really “sexy” (no shit, you guys) and I laughed so hard that I couldn’t breathe and they thought I hung up. Another network contacted me last year and I told them I’d consider it if they apologized for canceling Freaks and Geeks, and if they also brought Rags to Riches back so I could find out what happened to all those orphans. This is all true and is a great lesson in how much fun life can be when you realize you’re the only person in the world who doesn’t actually want to be on tv.
There were a few times when I almost got close to signing a contract just because I thought it would give me something funny to write about but all of the contracts contained a clause that said I would not be able to say anything about the show without prior consent, and so I turned them all down because my freedom to write whatever I want is more important than money, and that was a nice realization because it came as a great surprise to me to find out that I actually did have ethics.
Then last month I got a call from some people who’ve followed the book since it was just a small proposal and who’ve spent hours trading possum-chasing stories with me, and they found a network and writers that loved the people in my book as much as I do, and understood that irreverent is good and that cursing can be important (even if bleeped), and they even changed the wording of the contract from “You can never write about this” to “Fine. Just don’t be an asshole” (I’m paraphrasing) and suddenly I didn’t have anything to object to.
All this to say that you might read something somewhere about my book being optioned for a show, but if it actually becomes a tv show it probably won’t happen for a year or two so nothing really changes, except that I will get just enough money (after fees and taxes) to replace our broken dishwasher and put a fence up in the backyard. Sorry to crush your dreams if you’re thinking that a tv show changes your life. It doesn’t. Which is good, actually, because I like our life the way it is.
That being said, I probably won’t mention this again for years. This is the most anticlimactic announcement ever. Sorry about that. I suck at making things glamourous.
PS. I wasn’t planning on publishing this until I actually knew if anything would come of it but I’m getting twitter congratulations because it was just announced. It’s really very cool, but everything in my world stays at pretty much exactly the same level of hermity weirdness as before.
PPS. I found a place in town that rescues monkeys and I’m going to see if they’ll let me volunteer there, BECAUSE MONKEYS, you guys. Now, if that actually happens? That’s a big deal. It’s important to keep perspective.