November 13, 1998
It all depends on how you look at it.
I guess the 1999 pilot season is underway. It's very early for such activity, but when ABC makes the call, it's now my job to show up at the audition. This pilot, True Love, has a lot going for it... or a lot going against it, depending on your perspective.
The show is the first ABC pilot of the new season and therefore a product of the big "Holding Deal" ABC and I signed last July, which is great, right, because it means everything's underway and they're wasting no time getting me out auditioning. But then again, it might not be ideal to be up for the very first new show because there could be a bunch of better ones down the line that just aren't cranked up and ready to go yet.
The show is a sitcom with four main characters, one of whom would be played by me, which is great, right, because being one of four leads means a lot of good scenes and a substantial presence on the show. But then again, closer examination reveals that two of the four parts are really the leads, in fact one of them is played by one of the producers, Adam Goldberg, and this is, in a sense, a star vehicle for him, so it's secretly "The Adam Goldberg Show". So as nice as it may seem, I would not be one of an "ensemble of four."
The show was written by an old Harvard friend, Maya Forbes, which is great, right, because it's nice to have a friend on the inside pulling for me, sticking up for her old Harvard buddy. But then again, I was really better friends with her little sister, China Forbes, and when push comes to shove, she may, in fact, shy away from having little Johnny Ducey, her sister's college friend, trying to pull of a lead role in her big new sitcom. I mean, helping out a friend is one thing, but putting the future of your sitcom on the line for your sister's friend is another.
What's cool and exciting about Maya, however, is that she wrote for a number of years on the Emmy-winning Larry Sanders show, which is great, right, because she has such an impressive track record. But then again, Gary Shandling probably ruled that ship with an iron fist and was responsible for a lot of REwriting to punch up the scripts. So how much of what we ever saw was Maya's and how much was generated by the team of writers and the show's star?
As far as the role is concerned, the character is relatively generic, which is great, right, because I can easily step right into it and there is nothing about it that makes me 'wrong' for it. But then again, because it's so generic, almost anyone could 'step right into it' and come up with something decent. There's nothing about it that makes me uniquely 'right' either, like there was on The Hanleys. I have no inherent advantage here.
How did my reading go? Well, they laughed at a lot of the stuff I did, which is great, right, because it means they liked what I was doing. But then again, Maya is a friend and if she hadn't laughed at least a little, that wouldn't have been very nice.
So that's where I stand on this thing. I am firmly and wholeheartedly right smack dab on the fence. There is a fine view in either direction and the truth is probably some amalgam of all the different ideas here. Like almost every decision that needs to be made in this business, it is extremely difficult to predict the future. And even looking back on decisions, it's often hard to interpret the past. So you just close your eyes and jump in, hoping you are a strong enough swimmer to survive the waves and storms and sharks that keep trying to pull you under.
Go on to the Callback.