THEY WENT ANOTHER WAY

A veteran television writer and producer chronicles his struggle to get a TV show sold and into production.

Kaplan’s pilot, about a woman in a relationship with a man half her age, attracts industry interest when Glenn Close signs on, then even more buzz when Close suggests Pete Davidson as her co-star. What follows is a blizzard of emails, texts, premeetings, Zoom meetings, and postmortems with the actors, their agents, and reps from streaming services and production companies. These would read as tediously as they sound, were it not for Kaplan’s wry, ironic delivery, and his wearied perspective as the pitches and counter-pitches plod on for months. Kaplan is also a New Yorker cartoonist, and his journal entries have the same snappy rhythm and pace as cartoon captions; each day’s reflections rarely run more than a few pages. Because the diary covers 2022, Kaplan notes that year’s cataclysmic events: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the pandemic. His project thus becomes “an aspirational comedy…in dystopian times.” At the same time, he writes about his everyday life with his wife and children in Los Angeles, including home repairs and recipes for vegan soups and casseroles. In the end, Showtime pulls out of the deal, and Kaplan realizes that his book is about not shooting his TV show. But even this he finds “profound,” and he achieves a certain equanimity, writing that he doesn’t “need or want anything other than what I have.” In the context of today’s Hollywood, that comes close to achieving enlightenment.

Hollywood dealmaking as seen from the inside out.