In the safe haven of my closet, I checked my phone and found a text from my agent to call her. It had been a year since I was fired as a staff writer on the religious family dramaHappiness Road.Who came up with that title anyway? I’ll never know. The creators had all quit by the time I signed on. I got fired for telling the new, much younger head writer that I thought the show presented a sense of false moralism. I was fired on the spot and I didn’t even care. My career was a towering inferno by that point anyway, and writing a religious drama was a last-ditch effort to salvage it and save face after being accused of pandering to the male showrunner on a different series.
It was the popular streaming seriesLitigators. And bypandering to,I mean sleeping with. I hadn’t done anything of the sort. Lars was a fan of my writing before I even started working for him. We were great friends, but that was all.Litigatorswas a dramedy about a fabulously dysfunctional family of lawyers in Seattle, which happens to describe my best friend’s family. I also grew up in Seattle. I had a lot of material. Lars assigned many of the episodes to me, which won us both three Emmys. Lars didn’t deserve the slimy reputation he got because of it. He was always all about the work and he got blacklisted too.
The accusations were made by Beth Zinn, a jealous female co-writer who couldn’t pitch the idea of water to people on fire. Every episode pitch she gave involved someone stealing a dog. It just became a stupid joke. No one wanted her ideas or writing, so of course she found a way to ruin everyone else’s career because of her wounded ego. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to research court cases involving K-9 theft in Seattle, but I got the brunt of her wrath because we were the only two female writers on the show, and exactly the same age. In retrospect, thewhole dog-theft thing could have made for some much-needed funny moments on the show, but it didn’t happen, and it wasn’t entirely my fault. If I could go back, maybe I would have fought harder for her.
I can’t believe I actually feel sorry for a person who was so vindictive and terrible to me, but that’s the thing…pity can make you have unreasonable feelings. In my mind she is the scum, desperate at the bottom of the sludge, trying to claw her way up. It’s more heartbreaking than unnerving. Once my back-to-back miscarriages were public knowledge at work, I overheard Beth telling another co-worker that I was full of dead babies and spiders. Maybe if she could have written with the same zest and detail of her shitty comments, she would have had some success.
I stared at the phone for another beat, then dialed my agent, Connie.
“Dani, hi.”
“Hi.”
“I haven’t heard from you,” she said in a concerned voice.
I jerked my head back. Was I supposed to call her to remind her I still didn’t have a job? “Well, nothing is new really, so—”
“What happened to the pilot?”
I had told her a year ago I was going to create a show and write a pilot that no one could take away from me. I had basically given Connie and the agency aBraveheartspeech. It was very dramatic. I yelled over a conference call, “They may take my Emmys, but they will never take my pride!” No one actually took Emmys away from me, but it felt like it when the accusations were swirling.
I had said I planned to write a new, better dramedy that was going to be likeParenthoodmeetsTheIce Stormwith a sprinkle ofThirtysomething. Connie was totally behind me on it and saidshe would sell the shit out of it. That was a year ago, and so far I had only written twelve nonsensical pages.
“The pilot is happening. I just went in and tweaked it a bit yesterday.” That wasn’t a lie. I deleted a comma the day before, then instantly shut the document down.
“Meaning you still only have twelve pages?” She took a deep breath and went on. “You told me in the beginning, eight years ago when I became your agent, that you never wanted me to do the rah-rah bit.”
“Yeah, I don’t need an ego boost.”
“About five years ago, Dani, you told me you don’t respond whatsoever to tough love either.”
“Exactly, I want a straight shooter, but I don’t need to be reminded that I am broken-down, unemployed, almost divorced, and aging at hyper-speed.”
“Is that all you are?”
“Connie, are you serious?”
“What are you doing right now at this very moment?”
I looked down at myself. I had taken off my blouse to blow my nose into it, so I was sitting in my slacks and a bra only, on the floor of my dark closet drinking chardonnay from the bottle at two in the afternoon.
“I’m talking to you. That’s what I’m doing,” I said.
“What were you doing just before you called me?”
“What’s your point?”
“You’ve told me many times not to agent you, but I think it’s time to agent you.”
“I meant I didn’t want you overwhelming me with your endless idioms.”
“Your behavior is beyond the pale, Dani.”
“Oh my god!”
“Listen to me, you are the most talented writer I know. You’reprolific, brilliant, clever. Do not waste it. You are not a dime a dozen. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here, so I’ll stop beating around the bush—”
“No more horses, no more beating bushes, no more cats and dogs!”
