The television station Bravo ran a contest last month in conjunction with an upcoming reality series entitled "Situation: Comedy." Contestants were invited to submit half-hour sitcom scripts. Fifty finalists will be winnowed down to two, whose scripts will be developed into fifteen-minute presentations to be broadcast and voted upon by viewers. The winner will receive $25,000 and a year's worth of agency representation and the process will be filmed by Bravo for a ten-episode series.
I bit. My script, entitled, "We Hate TeddyBot," is about a woman whose job it is to answer letters from children who are rabid fans of a popular half-Teddy, half robot toy. One day, the boss calls her up to his office to inform her she's fired. The episode takes her through the initial shock; the act of stealing as many office supplies as she can cram into her handbag; and the reactions of her weepy co-worker, her needy roommate, and her solicitous ex-husband. Along the way, she meets a boozy, chronically unemployed accountant, whose cynicism shakes her. At episode's end, she stiffens her resolve and prepares to face her future. Think "Mary Tyler Moore" meets "The Apprentice."
I procrastinated for five weeks before I sat down on the Monday before the Saturday deadline and wrote like a demon for five days. (Note to aspiring writers: bad idea.) I pulled the script together an hour before the Post Office closed on Saturday afternoon.
I felt a great sense of relief as I handed my package to the postal worker. Even if I wasn't chosen, I felt good about submitting a well-written script, on deadline. As I was leaving the P.O., I passed a woman who was stamping an envelope that bore the "Situation: Comedy" contest address. For a moment, I felt smugly superior because my entry was already mailed, albeit five minutes prior. Then, the absurdity hit me. What are the odds of two people mailing their entries at the same post office, 3,000 miles from the contest site, minutes before the deadline? What if the same scenario was being played out in every post office in every town across America? And what about all the entries that already had been mailed over the past six weeks? I felt nauseous at the thought of all the competition.
By the time I got home, I was over it. In the weeks to come, I checked my e-mail daily, awaiting the missive from Bravo that informed me of my finalist status. I also visited the Bravo website, hoping for a contest update. By the third week, I was antsy, so I Googled "Situation: Comedy" to see if I could find some like-minded individuals. Sure enough, someone had created a blog to ask if anyone had heard anything.
I actually could hear hearts breaking when I came to the post in which a writer said he had been contacted and had made it to Round 1. Those who hadn't heard from Bravo were instantly doubtful and they implied that the poster was lying. Then another poster advised that he, too, was a finalist, and a third pointed us to a website of a stand-up comic who also had been notified.
Some posters were happy for their fellow writers and wished them well. Others could not transcend denial and flamed the finalists. Others flamed the flamers. Most were simply pissed at Bravo for not informing contestants that selections had been made. I was simpatico with the last group.
A number of writers offered to share their product and I read some of the scripts. It appears the next big thing in sitcoms is aliens. Vomiting aliens. In bars, in apartments, in offices. Aliens. Vomiting. What was I thinking, writing about people? My bad.
Though I had studied scriptwriting and had written several spec scripts, I did some research to confirm that I had covered all of my bases. I was pleased to see that I had. I did learn something troubling, however. Apparently, it is the mark of the rank amateur to submit a script that is held together by three metal brad fasteners. The industry preference is for two brads. Two brads. My bad.
So now I know – my script wasn't rejected because it was not funny. It wasn't rejected because the network received 30,000+ entries that had to be read in two weeks. It wasn't rejected because they didn't have time to read all the scripts. "We Hate TeddyBot" was rejected because it was held together by three brads – and also because it was encased in an orange cover (Black is de rigueur.)
In the end, it turns out that I'm not a failure as a writer. I'm a failure as an office-supply buyer. Good to know.
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